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DANIEL 

DARIUS THE MEDIAN 

CYRUS THE GREAT 

A Chronologico - Historical Study 



Based on Results of Recent Researches, and from 
Sources Hebrew, Greek, Cuneiform, etc. 



BY 

Rev. Joseph Horner, D.D., LL.D. 

Member of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 
London, England 



Pittsburgh, Pa. 
JOSEPH HORNER 

EATON & MAINS : - • NEW YORK 
JENNINGS & PYE : - - CINCINNATI 



-^^ 

,^^ 



\6'5^ 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS* 
Two COWEB RccfivEO 

JUN. 1 t^OI 

COPVRIOMT tKTBV 

ClASS O^XXo. N<., 
COPY B. 



] 



Copyright, Joseph Horner 
1901 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Preface « 5 

Preliminary 7 

I. The Story of Daniel 9 

II. War of Cyrus with Astyages, and Date of His Over- 
throw 42 

III. The Persons and Other Matters Pertaining to the 

Taking of Babylon and the Extinction of the 

Babylono-Chaldean Empire 61 

IV. Identification of Darius the Median 74 

V. Matters Subsidiary , 114 



PREFACE 



It was at first proposed to give a title-page to this 
work which would present a general view of its con- 
tents. That could be done, it was thought, somewhat 
after this manner: '^Daniel, Darius the Median, and 
Cyrus the Great; an authentication of Daniel's book, 
an identification of the Median, an elucidation, in part, 
of the story of the Great King, and parts of the books 
of Jeremiah and Ezra; aiming, by information derived 
from recent researches, and from sources Hebrew^ 
Greek, Cuneiform, etc., to bring more clearly into 
view the general and singular accuracy of the Biblical 
historical notes, for the period from the fall of Nineveh, 
B. C. 607, to the reign of Darius the Persian, son of 
Hystaspes, B. C. 521 ; with tabulated chronology and 
related suggestions, geographical, exegetical, etc. ; the 
whole intended as an effort, in its sphere, corrective of 
some of the errors, oversights, misinterpretations, etc., 
of former writers, and of the later destructive criti- 
cism." The references to authorities need only the 
statement that R. P. refers to the first series of Records 
of the Past, and R. P. N. S. to the new or second series, 
both edited by Professor Sayce. 

What was begun simply as a magazine or review 
article largely outgrew the space usually allotted in 
such publications. Therefore, being submitted to cer- 



6 Preface 

tain persons who seemed to be competent to judge of 
its merits, and their verdict indicating that it is, for the 
most part, a new, original setting of its subject, an in- 
teresting and valuable contribution to its literature, the 
author felt it to be a duty to make this his first venture 
in book form, and thus issue some part of the results of 
study and investigations which have been his luxury 
through many otherwise very busy and laborious 
years. It will opportunely follow the sumptuous vol- 
umes of Assyrian and Babylonian history by Dr. 
Rogers. 

He ventures, also, to dedicate this book to the min- 
isters and people of the territory covered by the Pitts- 
burgh, Erie, West Virginia and East Ohio Confer- 
ences, as a respectful indication of his appreciation of 
favors received during the long period of his associa- 
tion with them. 

Pittsburgh, Pa., January i, 1901. 



DANIEL, DARIUS THE MEDIAN 
AND CYRUS THE GREAT .-. .-. 

A Chronologico-Historical Study 



Preliminary 

It is the purpose of this paper, in the light afforded 
by such sources of information as may be indicated, 
to propose, tentatively, a solution, or solutions, within 
the range of certainty or probability, of apparent his- 
torical difficulties. These arise, it is thought, in whole 
or in part, from methods heretofore pursued in the 
treatment of the history as read in, or into, the Biblical, 
the secular, and the cuneiform accounts brought to 
light by the recent researches and exhumations in 
western Asia. 

The substantial accuracy of the several sources of 
information thus described, and to which reference is 
made, will be assumed without much questioning, other 
than that which may arise in the process of endeavor- 
ing to secure a satisfactory interpretation. In cases of 
positive or inexplicable disagreement or demonstrable 
error in secular writers, whether classical or monu- 
mental, the inscriptions on the latter will be esteemed 
as of superior authority, when their several narratives 
are not incompatible one with another. 



8 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

It may be here frankly confessed that it is thought 
that the statements of the Biblical writers, including 
Daniel, to whom special attention and regard will be 
given, when properly interpreted and understood, will 
be found to be remarkably free from inaccuracy when 
brought to the test of other reliable sources of infor- 
mation; and that they are rather supplementary than 
either in disagreement or contradiction. When these 
two sources agree in matters actually stated or set 
forth, to neither can an omission or omissions of other 
matters or of more extensive detail be charged as con- 
tradictory, nor be justly used to discredit what is writ- 
ten. The period covered will embrace substantially the 
times of Daniel, the reign of the ''Great King," Cyrus 
the Second, and will be extended to the usurpation of 
the Persian throne by Darius, the son of Hystaspes, 
a period of somewhat less than a century and ending 
B. C. 521. 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 



L The Story of Daniel 

The story of Daniel begins with the twentieth year 

of Nabopolassar, for a time viceroy or governor of 

Babylon under the suzerainty of Assyria, 

and afterward king of the later kingdom fallen, em- 
pire passed 
of the Chaldeans. This was the year B. C. to Babylon 

•; and Media. 

606, the third of Jehoiakim's reign, when 
Nebuchadnezzar, conjointly with his father, king of 
the Chaldeans, laid siege to Jerusalem, which in fourth 
Jehoiakim (605) was surrendered. At the suggestion 
of the conqueror a selection of youths of noble lineage 
was made, and Daniel, among others, was selected 
and taken to Babylon by the ''Great King's'' son and 
copartner in the kingdom, who in B. C. 604, by the 
death of his aged father, became sole king of the 
Babylonian and Chaldean kingdom. Three years 
previously Nineveh had fallen a prey to the combined 
forces: the Babylonians, under the joint command of 
Nabopolassar and his son as co-rex, and the Medes, 
with their more or less fierce allies, under Cyax/^res I 
(Ahasuerus I, Tobit xiv, 15), who dominated and 
was strengthened by the tributary ''Manda," or bar- 
barous or nomad tribes from the north-northwest to- 
ward the river Halys, and northeast of Assyria, to- 
ward the Caspian Sea ; he being at that time in about 
the thirtieth year of an eventful reign. During these 
three years the indications are that the ''Great King" 



10 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Nabopolassar, being much in war, had followed the 
example of Esar-haddon, and what seemed to be the 
Oriental custom, when the father was absent or infirm 
or busily engaged with other affairs, as building and 
improving his cities or temples or palaces, that his son 
should be declared co-rex, and thus were delegated 
to him the kingly title and functions. It is thus that 
he is proleptically called (Dan. i, i) "Nebuchadnez- 
zar,"^ king of Babylon." 

Eastward, and probably in the time of Gudea north- 
ward, of Nineveh, and southward toward the Persian 
Gulf, including the kingdom of Susa, or Shushan, 
stretched the mountainous kingdom of Elam, when, 
at its greatest expansion, dominating Parsuas, the 
ancient Persia, which, when it first appears in the in- 
scriptions,! seems to have lain to the north and east of 
Elam between the Caspian and Lake Urmiah, and north- 

* Otherwise, and perhaps more correctly, written '* Nebuchadrezzar," the 
change being in all likelihood owing to a simple and more or less common dialectic 
interchange of the liquids '* n " and " r," both forms being used in Holy Writ. So 
likewise were the liquids '" 1 " and " r " in " Pul " and '' Poros," interchanged, and 
now claimed to be one and the same person. The name does not seem to have 
absolute uniformity in the inscriptions, and in the Greek forms we have for the 
*r." in some cases ''P'and in others " n." This, therefore, militates nothing 
against Daniel, not more at most than it does against Jeremiah, who uses both 
forms. 

t So Schrader's map (with Keilenschriften und Geschictsforschung) places 
" Barsuas," which according to Professor Sayce is the Vannic form of Parsuas, or 
the ''Classic Persia," our Persia {R. P. N. S.^ vol. iv, p. 46, note ; vol. v, p. 149). 
As to Media, Professor Sayce's note is : " It must be remembered that the Medes, 
spoken of by Sennacherib did not as yet inhabit the district of which Ekbatana 
subsequently became the capital. Hence the title of ' far off ' applies to them 
here'*'' (R. P. iV. 5"., vol. vi, p. 87). Schrader, however, thinks It "' unlikely " that 
*' Barsuas " is to be identified with Parsuas, or Persia. But the finding of the Per- 
sians in this locality at their first appearance in history makes it much less 
difficult to understand how they first appear as subordinates, and so soon afterward 
as conquerors of the Medes; results in both cases much more easily and likely to 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 11 

west of ancient Media and its ancient capital, Ekbatana 
(now Takht-i-Sulayman). 

Over both Elam and Persia the Medes seem to 
have gained such an ascendency as to have made 
them feudatories, or established over them Eiam and 

Parsuas sub- 

a suzerainty. How and when this suze- jectto Media, 
rainty had been secured are not certainly known, 
but whenever it occurred Elam seems to have been so 
absorbed by its conquerors as to have almost ceased 
to have a separate national identity, and so merged in 
the empire of the Medes that, when somewhat suddenly 
their power was wrested from the Medes by the 
Persians, Elam, as a part of the possessions of the 
king of Media, passed into the hands of Cyrus the 
Second, without any special mention of its having 
come under his power, or of its having been conquered 



be attained as friendly states and neighbors, with no intervening nationality to be 
passed over or through, and which are nowhere claimed as having been first con- 
quered, or indeed, as having in any way been concerned in these operations. In the 
southern location, Elam, Susa and Karmanias in part would seem to have occu- 
pied the position of ''buffer states," whose consent must in some way have been 
gained either for active co-operation, or passively to have suff'ered the invading 
hosts to pass through their dominions. It is further possible, as suggested above, 
that the Elam of Gudea's time may have covered a territory much more extensive, 
stretching out farther north than that to which it was later confined, so that the 
Anzan of the Cyrus branch of the Achaemenians may have been farther north than 
the later Elam, and contiguous to both Media and Persia. That in later years the 
names Parsua, or Persia, and of the Median capital Ekbatana should be found 
farther south, may be easily and satisfactorily accounted for on the theory that as 
the Aryan tribes or clans, both Median and Persian, migrated southward, they 
carried with them their own distinctive names, just as colonists from Europe have 
done in this western hemisphere, in some cases prefixing a distinctive term, as^ 
Neiv England, New York, New Orleans ; but far more frequently using the old 
names pure and simple, as London, Paris, Edinburgh, etc. Indeed, at this very 
time in their migrations from the older to the newer settlements the same process 
is going on, and names are carried with them by the emigrants and given to their 
new settlements to be perpetual naemorials of their former places of abode. 



12 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

by this descendant of that Achaemenes who seems to 
have been the first of his race to have attained to the 
regal title or authority. In the inscriptions Cyrus first 
Ori in and ^PP^^^^ ^^ ''king of Anzan," a place or do- 
Cy^us^the i^3,in whose exact locality has not, as yet, 
Great httxi Certainly determined. It is supposed 

by some that a city of this name may have existed in 
Persia ; by others, that it was somewhere in Elam, or 
that this was another name for Elam, or that it was a 
province of Elam. It is also suggested that Persia may 
have had two places occupied as seats of government, 
each of them having rulers, who, as in the scheme 
which follows, claimed the title of king, on the one 
hand, of Persia, and, on the other, of Anzan. 

His own account of himself and his genealogy is 
thus given : ''I am Cyrus, the King of Multitudes, the 
Great King, the powerful King, the King of Babylon, 
the King of Sumer and Accad, the King of the four 
zones, the son of Cambyses, the Great King, the King 
of the City of Anzan, the great grandson of Teispes, 
the Great King, the King of the City of Anzan, of the 
ancient seed royal whose rule Bel and Nebo love'' 
(R, P, N, S.y vol. V, p. i66, lines 20-22; H. C, and M., 
p. 505). In lines preceding he speaks of himself as 
''king of Anzan," and as such is first introduced by 
Nabonidos. The "seed royaF' can be none other than 
that of the Persian family of the Achaemenians, whose 
original seat was Persia. The Behistun inscription of 
Darius, son of Hystaspes, supplements that of Cyrus, 
and completes the genealogy as follows: 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 13 

*'I am Darius, the Great King, the King of Kings, 
the King of Persia, the King of the Provinces, the son 
of Hystaspes, the grandson of Arsames, the Achae- 
menian; of Arsames the father was Ariamnes; of 
Ariamnes the father was Teispes ; of Teispes the father 
was Achaemenes. Says Darius the King, on that ac- 
count we are called Achsemenians ; from antiquity 
those of our race have been Kings. Says Darius the 
King, there are eight of my race who have been Kings 
before me. I am the ninth ; for a very long time [or, 
better, ^in a double line'] we have been Kings'' (R. 
P., vol. i, p. 113, etc. ; R. P, N. S., vol. iii, p. 150). 

The family line, or ''tree," may therefore be thus 
constructed : 

Kings. 

1. Achaemenes, King of Persia. 

2. Teispes, King of Anzan. 

3. Cyrus I, King of Anzan. 4. Ariamnes, King of Persia. 

5. Cambyses I, King of Anzan. 6. Arsames, King of Persia. 

Hystaspes superseded by 

7. Cyrus II, King of Anzan, of Persia, of Babylon, of the Medo-Persian empire. 

8. Cambyses II, King of the Medo-Persian empire. 

9. Darius, son of Hystaspes, King of Persia, and its provinces or satrapies. 

Hystaspes, the father of Darius, may, possibly, at 
the death of his father have been very young, or in- 
capable of resisting the rising power and vaulting 
ambition of Cyrus II, who was, failing the posterity 
of Arsames, the next heir, or next of kin of the 
collateral branch, and may have asserted his claim 
with such force that resistance would be worse than 
useless, and thus the throne passed from that branch, 
to be reclaimed, on the failure of the house of Cyrus, 
by the son of Hystaspes. 



14 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

As no mention of Persia is made in connection with 
Teispes, and yet both Cyrus and Darius seem to go 
back to him to legitimate their claim and action, the 
query properly arises as to whether Teispes had not 
made a conquest of the adjoining Elamite province of 
Anzan, and, consolidating it with his patrimonial king- 
dom of Persia, had during his own lifetime compre- 
hended both under the one name and assumed the 
title of king of Anzan, dividing it afterward so that 
each of his two sons might have, by his gift or their 
inheritance, a throne. 

It will be seen that Cyrus traces his ancestry no 
further than to Teispes, king of Anzan, and then 
claims in general terms to be of the ''seed royal ;'' this 
being, indeed, sufficient and yet necessary to establish 
a show of legitimacy in his claim to succeed, or of 
his actual succession to the Persian throne after the 
death of Arsames of the other line ; since it goes back 
to the ruler whose reign began before the division 
was made in the persons of his two sons, and thus 
completes the chain of title. No inscription is quoted 
in which Cyrus is styled king of Persia until the ninth 
year of the reign of Nabonidos (cir. B. C. 547) ; but 
the death of Arsames may have occurred some two or 
three years previously. Thus also is established the 
legitimacy of the seizure of the throne by Darius, the 
son of Hystaspes, after the line of Cyrus had become 
extinct by the death of Cambyses II and his brother 
Smerdes. 

This entry upon the "monuments'' in the ninth year 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus IS 

of Nabonidos, the last Chaldean king, abundantly 
justifies and avouches the accuracy of the Biblical ti- 

... ^1-1 tie ''Cyrus, 

Biblical writers m eivins: to Cyrus the title king of Per- 

^ ° "^ SI a," vindi- 

of ''king of Persia;" and ''the Persian" cated. 
nationality is proved by the twice-told genealogy. 
They are thus protected , from the charge of being 
simply "reflectors" from the times of Darius Hystaspes. 
The date of every Biblical writer who entitles him 
"king of Persia" is later than this ninth year of Na- 
bonidos; later, indeed, than the taking of Babylon, 
which occurred in the seventeenth year of this Chaldean 
king. Nor is this statement contravened by the oc- 
currence of this name in the book of Isaiah, whatever 
may be the date of the writer. For when the name 
Cyrus occurs in Isaiah it is without territorial or 
national designation, he probably being known only to 
Isaiah and to his time simply by revelation, or to 
prophetic foresight, as a coming ruler. That is cer- 
tainly the interpretation which would most naturally 
present itself to a believer in the prophetic endowment, 
in connection with the emphatic conspicuousness of the 
expressions, "I have called thee by thy name ;" "I have 
surnamed thee, though tbpu hast not known me" (Isa. 
xliii, i; xlv, 4). Biit for our purpose it matters not 
whether it is prophecy or history, before or after his 
coming. The pregnant fact to be emphasized is that 
there Is no contradiction or disagreement in the state- 
ments of the Biblical writers and the inscriptions in the 
matter of his kingship of Persia ; for both agree that 
at the time of which the writing gives its account 



16 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Cyrus was king of Persia, the inscriptions giving him 
this title at a date earlier than when it was given him 
in the Bible. That, therefore, must be placed to the 
credit of the Biblical writers, as in so far sustaining 
and confirming their accuracy and ''unforgetfulness," 
against the statement of Professor Sayce that the 
writers of Greece and Rome, like those of the later 
books of the Old Testament (?) itself, have agreed 
with Darius in forgetting who Cyrus really was. "The 
sole record of the fact which remained before the 
discovery of the cuneiform texts was a single passage 
in the book of Isaiah. The conqueror of Babylon was 
an Elamite prince" (//. C. and M,, p. 518). 

It is not, however, by any means certain that Isa. 
xxi, i-io, refers to Cyrus and the Persian invasion. 
It is against this view that Elam is first named. For 
if that is for Persia the order is different from the 
usage of both Biblical and secular histories, which at 
the rise of the empire of Cyrus put the Medes first, 
"Medes and Persians," not ''Persians and Medes." 
Again, the expression, ''Besiege, O Media," does not, 
at all events, accord with Professor Sayce's declara- 
tion that "we now know that the siege never took 
place" (p. 523). Then, too, the description of the 
result of the "going up" and the "besieging," the taking 
of Babylon, does not at all correspond with the course 
which the monuments ascribe to Cyrus after the cap- 
ture of the city. The result is given by Isaiah thus : 
"Babylon is fallen, is fallen ; and all the graven images 
of her gods he hath broken unto the ground" (verse 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 17 

9). Surely this hardly would be expected of a dynasty 
''whose rule Bel and Nebo love." This same Cyrus 
makes it his boast that "all the gods of Sumer and 
Accad, whom Nabonidos, to the anger of (Merodach) 
the lord of the gods, had brought into Babylon, by 
the command of Merodach the great lord I settled 
peacefully in their sanctuaries in seats which their 
hearts desired. May all the gods whom I have brought 
into their own cities intercede daily before Bel and 
Nebo that my days be long, may they pronounce bless- 
ings upon me, and may they say to Merodach my lord : 
'Let Cyrus the king, thy worshiper, and Cambyses his 
son [accomplish the desire] of their hearts ; [let them 
enjoy length] of days' " {H. C, and M., pp. 506, 507). 
These can scarcely be the words of an iconoclast such 
as the result in Isaiah seems to demand. 

In truth, this "burden of the desert [or wilderness] 
of the sea" reads much more like a description or 
anticipation of a sudden raid or irruption, such as was 
characteristic of the age of Isaiah and Sennacherib, 
wherein Elam and its more than a score of confederates 
or allies, among whom the Medes, as probably at that 
time the most numerous and powerful, are named by 
the prophet as representative of the allies, many of 
them perhaps already Median feudaries. We now know 
from the inscriptions that for several campaigns there 
was almost constant warfare between Sennacherib, on 
the one part, and Elam and its allies, on the other 
part, largely on both sides in contention for the posses- 
sion of Babylon, and that Elam and its allies conjointly 



18 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

with the Chaldeans had possession of Babylon more 
than once {R, P,, vol. i, p. 48, etc.). The incident of 
the destruction of the ^'graven images/' peculiar in the 
Babylonish idolatry, is not at all incredible, as it was 
doubtless intended to install in their places the gods 
of their own country, and thus to escape or counter- 
balance the malign influence of a hostile worship. And 
there are not wanting indications in the recorded dis- 
affection of the hierarchy that something had occurred 
offensive to the gods of Babylon and their worshipers 
prior to the coming of Cyrus, as may be detected in the 
account just quoted as to the redistribution of the 
gods of the cities and provinces, evidently their images 
having been brought in by the Elamites and others to 
take the places vacated by the destruction of the local 
images. It is not known what, if any, connection this 
^'burden" may have had with or to the expedition made 
by Sennacherib, to the sea at the mouth of the river 
Ulai, during which Suzub the Chaldean 'Raised a force 
in the rear of Sennacherib, and the king of Elam, 
who had hitherto only given secret help to the Baby- 
lonians, now marched his army into Babylon. The 
Elamite and Chaldean forces captured Babylon" 
(Smith, Bah,, p. 131; Assyr., p. 125; cf. i?. P. as 
above). 

As to the "forgetfulness" of the Biblical and classical 

writers, both records show that his being also ''king 

Forgetful- ^^ Persia" was well remembered by both 

cafwrfters Hebrews and Babylonians, and also by 

disclaimed, ^^^^.j^^ Hystaspes, who says: 'Thus I re- 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 19 

covered the empire which had been taken away from 
my family [i. e., his Hne or branch by the Cyrus 
branch, especially by the usurper pseudo-Smerdes] ; 
I established it in its place as it had been before" 
(Behistun Inscription, Col. I, lines 10-14; Bible Edu- 
cator, vol. ii, p. 135). So, too, the Biblical accounts 
connect Elam with the Medes, and if it is true that he 
was also king of Elam, there is still further agreement 
between the Biblical and cuneiform authority. The 
omission of the king's name by the former constitutes 
no necessary contradiction of the latter, nor gives any 
room for the charge of unreliability. In what is actu- 
ally written and so far as it goes, if Professor Sayce 
is right, their agreement and accuracy are maintained. 
Elam was one of the parties which participated in the 
conquest of Babylon, at whatever time the conquest al- 
luded to in Isa. xxi, 8, w^as made, or whether it was in 
possession for a long or a short time, so says the Bible, 
and so say the inscriptions, if rightly read and under- 
stood. For the Medes were doubtless feudatories or 
allies, probably the most numerous and reliable of 
these, in the day of Elam's supremacy, when it so often 
raided Babylonia and more than once seized the capital ; 
and in this Professor Sayce is understood substantially 
to concur. 

Thankful to this learned and unwearied Oriental 
and Biblical scholar, that largely through his labors 
so much has been discovered and estab- ,, ^ x> 

Medo-Per- 

lished, the hope is encouraged that in some \\^^ invasfon 
way the statement of all history that the ^^Babyionia. 



20 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Medes were the other conspicuous sharers in the honor 
of the particular conquest of Babylon, when it passed 
into the hands of Cyrus, will be either vindicated or its 
origin satisfactorily explained. That they were seems 
never before to have been doubted. But, according to 
Professor Sayce, by the monumental inscriptions the 
honor belongs to the "people of the Manda," a people 
whose very existence under that name as a national 
title seems to have been utterly unknown to the his- 
torical literature of the world until their existence and 
stupendous doings were brought out "of the dust of 
the ages.'' That concealment of their glory is, how- 
ever, no valid argument against their claim, if other- 
wise substantiated. 

That we may fairly consider this claim, and be in a 
position to correct or vindicate the scriptural account, 

Claim of the ^^hich names the Medes, but never "the 
against ^th'e Manda," we may collect the several occur- 

^^^* rences of the name in the inscriptions as 

found in Higher Criticism and the Monuments, by Pro- 
fessor Sayce, and the interpretations found in the books 
which treat of such matters. I quote p. 528: "It was 
the conquest of the Manda, and not of the Medes, 
which changed Cyrus from the tributary king of 
Anzan into an independent and powerful monarch." 
"If, therefore, his troops consisted of others besides 
Elamites and Persians, they would have been the 
Manda of Ekbatana." [But not necessarily, since they 
might have come from the tribes farther north.] Page 
126: "It was a combination of the Median tribes with 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 21 

the king of the Manda, or 'nomads/ which brought 
about the rise of the Median empire, and paved the 
way for the empire of Cyrus/' [There was, there- 
fore, a "Median empire/' It was, however, above 
quoted as being ''the conquest of the Manda, and not 
of the Medes, that made him a powerful monarch." 
But if the Medes and the Manda combined and formed 
the Median empire, how could Cyrus conquer the 
Manda without conquering the Medes? And if the 
Manda were conquered before they combined with the 
Medes, how could these two combine to form the 
Median empire ? And if the Manda were the stronger 
and more numerous body, why was it not the Mandean 
empire? There is surely confusion, if not contradic- 
tion, here. It is pertinent to remind the reader that in 
the Biblical account Cyrus is not represented to be king 
of any country other than Persia and Babylon, by 
special or distinctive title.] "To the east of it [Eden] 
lay the land of the 'nomads/ termed 'Nod' in Genesis, 
and Manda in the inscriptions" (p. 95). "The land of 
Nod, or the nomads, eastward of the edin of Baby- 
lonia, is the Manda of the cuneiform inscriptions" 
(p. 105). "Lud, I have elsewhere suggested that it 
was originally 'Nod,' that land of the 'nomads' 
[Manda], on the east of Babylonia where the Manda 
of the cuneiform inscriptions had their home" (p. 
146). As to the temple at Haran, "Nabonidos tells us 
that it had been destroyed by the 'Manda/ or 'nomads/ 
whose capital was at Ekbatana." [Evidently the north- 
ernmost city of that name.] "But the Manda had been 



22 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

overthrown by Cyrus, and Nabonidos was accordingly 
summoned in a dream by Merodach to restore the 
shrine" (p. 197). "The nomad Skyths, or Manda, as 
the Babylonians call them" (p. 451). ''In the judg- 
ment of Babylon, pronounced by Jeremiah, the nations 
who are called upon to overthrow the city of the op- 
pressor are neither Elam nor Persia, but the Medes, 
and the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz" 
(Jer. li, 27, 28). ''The Medes, moreover, are not the 
Medes of the classical writers, the Manda, or 'nomads,' 
of the cuneiform texts, but the Mada, the true Medes 
of the Assyrian inscriptions. This is evident partly 
because they are associated with the nations of the 
north, and not with Elam; partly because they are 
spoken of as governed by 'kings,' and not by a single 
monarch. The Manda of Ekbatana were under a 
single ruler; the Medes proper, on the other hand, as 
we know from the monuments, obeyed a number of 
different princes" (p. 484). [And yet we are told that 
the Manda and Medes combined to form the Median 
empire. Why did they not form a "Mandean empire," 
if as alleged it was "the conquest of the Manda" that 
made Cyrus so powerful ?] "In Jer. li, 2y, 28, Ararat is 
still a formidable power ; like Minni it has not as yet 
been absorbed into the empire of Cyrus ; and in place of 
Astyages, king of the nomad Manda of Ekbatana, it 
is 'the kings of the Medes' who are 'consecrated to the 
holy war'" (486). "The place of the Manda over 
whom Astyages ruled is taken by the Medes, by Minni, 
and by Ashkenaz." [But if the Manda of Ekbatana 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 23 

were settled in one habitation or territory and under 
one king, as is above represented, why should these 
settled Ekbatanite Manda be now called '^the nomad 
Manda of Ekhatana' f] ''The country of Kurdistan 
he (Merodach) has subjected to his (Cyrus's) feet" 
(505)- ''As yet the temple thou orderest to be built 
(in Haran), the people of the Manda surround it, and 
noisome are their forces. Merodach again spoke to 
me : the people of the Manda of whom thou speakest, 
they, their land, and the kings who are their allies exist 
no more. In the third year,* when it shall arrive, I will 
cause them to come, and Cyrus, the king of Anzan, 
their little servant, with his little army, shall overthrow 
the widespread people of the Manda. He shall capture 
Istuvegu, the king of the people of the Manda, and 
bring him a prisoner to his own country." [This hap- 
pened, on Professor Sayce's theory, not later than the 
sixth year of Nabonidos, possibly in his third year, 
about B. C. 552 or 550 {H, C, and M., pp. 500, 501, 
508). But "widespread" would seem to be an exagger- 
ated description of this kingdom of Ekbatana. Be- 
sides, if they were thus easily conquered, how could 
they thus combine to make the ''powerful Median 
empire" ?] 

"If it is startling to learn that Cyrus was in reality 
an Elamite prince, it is equally startling [ ?] to find that 
Istuvegu, or Astyages, was king, not of the Medes, but 
of the Manda." ["Startling," possibly, to the classical 

* A different rendering is made by Professor Sayce himself (/?. -P. iV. ^., pp. 169, 
170, lines 26-29, vol. v.) 



24 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

or secular historians, and to those who beUeve in or 
follow them only, but not necessarily to the Biblical; 
since, singularly enough, Cyrus is never once in the 
Bible called ''king of' either the ''Manda" or the 
"Medes,'' but is several times named "king of Persia," 
once ''king of Babylon/' True, Daniel writes that the 
kingdom over which Belshazzar ruled was "divided 
and given to the Medes and Persians /' but he distinct- 
ly indicates his meaning by limiting the rule of the 
Median king Darius to the kingdom of the Chaldeans ; 
thus distinguishing this from all other parts of the ex- 
tensive domain which originally composed the kingdom 
as left by Nebuchadnezzar, and that which had fallen 
to Cyaxares ( Ahasuerus) I, and then been included in 
his empire by Cyrus the Persian.] "As we have seen 
in an earlier chapter, the name of 'Manda' was applied 
by the Babylonians and the Assyrians to the nomad 
tribes who at times threatened their eastern and north- 
ern borders. The astrological tables refer to a period 
when the Manda overran Babylonia itself; when Bel 
and the other gods of Chaldea fled to Elam for safety, 
and the barbarians [i. e., 'the Manda,' as above] ruled 
the country for thirty years. It may be that the disaster 
here described was that conquest of Chaldea which the 
fragments of Berossus ascribe to the Medes. Be that 
as it may, Teuspa, or Teispes, the leader of the Gimir- 
ra, is called a Manda ['roving warrior/ by Talbot] 
by Esar-haddon, and an inscription of Assurbanipal, 
recently discovered by Mr. Strong, returns thanks to 
the Assyrian gods for the defeat of that 'limb of 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 25 

Satan,' Tuktammu of the Manda. It is possible that 
Tuktammu (or rather Duktammu) is the Lugdamis of 
Strabo, who led the Kimmerians [Manda] into KiHkia, 
from whence they afterward went westward and burnt 
Sardis. At all events, we must see in him a forerunner, 
if not a predecessor, of Istuvegu, the Astyages of the 
Greeks, who governed the Manda of Ekbatana. ... It 
would seem that the Manda of Ekbatana were the Scyth- 
ians of classical history" (520, 521). From the above 
it is apparent that the Kimmerians (Gimirra) and 
Scythians were "Manda." It is hardly probable that 
Teuspa the Kimmerian is the same person as Teispes 
the Achsemenian, though it is possible that in a sense 
just above hinted at the cultured Assyrians and Baby- 
lonians may have considered all the peoples north and 
northeast of them to be "Manda," or barbarians. "As 
we have seen, Teuspa the Kimmerian and his people are 
termed Manda by Esar-haddon, and in the inscriptions 
of Darius the Gimirra Umurgah of the Babylonian text 
correspond with the Saka Humuvarka of the Persian 
text. The Saka Humuvarka are the Amyrgian Sakae 
of Herodotos (vii, 64), who, he tells us, were "the 
Scythians of the Greeks" (520, 521). 

"Totally distinct from the Manda were the Mada, or 
Medes. Their land lay to the northeast of that of 
Ekbatana and extended as far as the shores of the 
Caspian" (521). But "the outposts of the Medes ex- 
tended westward to the Halys." The Medes, therefore, 
covered all the land north of the Ekbatanites, between 
them and the Caspian, and westward to the Halys, 



26 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

leaving, therefore, to Ekbatana apparently but a small 
territory, but giving to the Medes an immensely greater 
possession and population. Yet this somewhat circum- 
scribed kingdom of the Manda of Ekbatana is now said 
to have been the mighty power whose influence was 
felt all over Asia, but yet utterly failed to prevent its 
name from being lost to all history, and its place to be 
taken therein by the Medes, on this theory, an inferior 
and conquered people. Strangely, too, among a people 
of rare intelligence and unwearied historical research, 
so near to the time when the Manda must have achieved 
their renown, neither Biblicist, nor Herodotos, nor any 
other writer had discovered the blunder, or at least 
attempted the task undertaken by the present race of 
interpreters, to give the proper name to the empire, as 
the Manda-Persian instead of the Medo-Persian em- 
pire, so that the following might not have been needed 
at this late date. ''When, in the generations which 
succeeded Darius Hystaspes, Cyrus became the founder 
of the Persian empire the Medes and the Manda were 
confounded one with the other, and Astyages, the 
suzerain of Cyrus, was transformed into a Mede, and 
the city of Ekbatana into the capital of a Median em- 
pire" (526). Such a "transformation" is perhaps with- 
out a parallel in all history. But if, as Professor Sayce 
claims, the Manda and the Medes combined to form the 
Median empire, the transfer was already real, and 
Darius Hystaspes simply accepted the transfer already 
made, as did also the Greek historians; but still the 
mystery remains as to why and how this process had 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 27 

failed to be noted and the actual fact to be definitely 
stated. 

As to the location of the Median territory, we may 
further quote as follows : ''Eastward the Lydian empire 
stretched to the Halys ; there it met the outposts of the 
Median monarch ; westward it had incorporated into its 
army the wretched relics of the once formidable Kim- 
merians. . . . The Mada zvere, in fact, the Kurdish 
tribes who lived eastward of Assyria^ and whose terri- 
tory extended as far as the Caspian" (126). To this 
add what land is covered by the following description, 
that ''their [the Medes] land lay to the northeast of 
that of Ekbatana, and extended as far as the shores of 
the Caspian'^ (521). Thus again we have an expanse 
compared with which the possessions of Istuvegu, or 
Astyages, if limited by Assyria, Elam, Babylon and 
Persia, were comparatively insignificant, if he did not 
also control this vast region and "widespread" pop- 
ulation. 

In passing it may be well also to remember that (p. 
528) it is asserted that Istuvegu was a suzerain of 
Cyrus, as is also claimed by the Greek writers, a some- 
what remarkable coincidence, and suggestive that other 
parts of their story may prove to be correct. The truth 
of this suzerainty, so far as the quoted cuneiform in- 
scriptions are in evidence, seems to depend altogether 
upon the words, "their little servant'' (508), reported 
by King Nabonidos, and applied to Cyrus in relation to 
Istuvegu; but which, if correctly understood, may be 
admitted as sufficient to identify Istuvegu as the Asty- 



28 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

ages of the later historians, and in so far be confirm- 
atory of both accounts and of this suzerainty. 

These extracts have been transcribed that the reader 
may be able to form his own intelligent judgment as to 
the matters in controversy, from the statements from 
which the distinguished author and others have reached 
the conclusion that the Manda, and not the Medes, were 
the people who should have been named as the con- 
querors of Babylon under the leadership of Cyrus, 
king of Persia. 

As to the word "Manda," it will be seen that it has 
quite a variety of applications or meanings. It is ren- 
dered by "nomad;" is the equivalent of "Nod" in 
Genesis (pp. 95, 105, 126, 146, 197). "The nomad 
Skyths, as the Babylonians call them" (p. 451). "Bar- 
barians who overran the whole country." "Teuspa," 
a Kimmerian, is called a "Manda," but is not to be 
confounded with Teispes the ancestor of Cyrus, who is 
a Persian; Esar-haddon's inscription, as rendered by 
Talbot, being : "And Teispes the Kimmerian, a roving 
warrior, whose own country was remote in the province 
of Khubusna, him and all his army I destroyed" (R. P., 
lii, p. 115, lines 6-9). Here "Manda" is roving, i. e., 
"nomad." He can hardly be looked upon as in any 
way related to Istuvegu. 

From these references the conclusion seems to be 
fairly reached that the peoples to the north and east of 
the Assyrians and Babylonians, being for the most part 
of a different ethnic origin, were by these more civilized 
and cultured people known or described under the gen- 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 29 

eral term of "Manda," being chiefly nomadic or roving 
in their manner of Hfe ; just as the nations not of Israel 
were described by the Hebrews as ''Gentiles," and as 
to the Greeks and Romans other peoples were largely 
known as ''barbarians/' the first from their uncertain 
and wandering habits and condition, and the latter 
from their language or "manner of speech/' The state- 
ment made by Professor Sayce, as to "the people of the 
Manda'' of Ekbatana, that they were under one ruler, 
while the Medes were spoken of as governed by 
"kings," and not by a single monarch, may simply mark 
a stage in their progress, and is what may be indicated 
in the Greek accounts as having been ended under the 
first king Deiokes ; their condition prior to this ascend- 
ency having been of the tribal or clan character, each 
clan having its king or chief. 

In relation to Istuvegu, if he was the ruler of the 
southern Ekbatana and was limited to that circum- 
scribed province, the description of his forces ^j^^ j^^^^_ 
as "the widespread people of the Manda" ft'^s^Sni 
is certainly a gross exaggeration, but is ^^p^^^^* 
exactly proper if under this name were comprehended 
all the diverse peoples and tribes who had com- 
mon cause for resisting Cyrus; and if there were 
gathered under his command the nomadic tribes of the 
north and east in the vast regions included in the 
geographical description of territory above assigned 
to the Medes and Manda, the innumerable multitudes 
who were restless and aggressive, banding themselves 
together, ready at all times to force their way south- 



30 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

ward into regions supposed to be more desirable than 
their own. When spoken o£ collectively this general 
designation properly characterized the entire force, 
and was such a description of the hordes thus brought 
together as might naturally come from the Babylono- 
Chaldean king Nabonidos; for it is by him, and not 
by Cyrus, that the word is used of the peoples massed 
under Istuvegu. On any other theory it seems, indeed, 
utterly incredible that ''Manda'' should supersede 
*'Mada," or ''Medes," in these later inscriptions, and 
that the contrary should have happened to "Manda," to 
its utter exclusion from every other historical record, 
until these very modern discoveries, if ^'the people of 
the Manda'' had possessed a well-recognized, separate 
and exclusive local realm over which it exercised the 
rights of independent sovereignty ; and that from the 
very time of the taking of Babylon, and within the life- 
time of persons who had witnessed its overthrow, 
^'Mede" should be found in all the literature of Greek 
culture and elsewhere ; that to the Biblical writers the 
word "Manda" as a proper name should be utterly un- 
known, while the Medes are recognized as a distinct 
nationality, and as conspicuously in the founding of the 
new imperium, by both sacred and secular writers. It 
seems evident, also, from the use of the term "Manda" 
that it is always the name or designation of a people, 
and never the name of a place or country; while, on the 
other hand, Mede is the name of a distinct and sepa- 
rate nationality, which has either given the name to the 
country in which the thus named people dwelt, or the 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 31 

name of the country, Media, gave the name ''Mede" 
to its inhabitants. That "Manda" has the general use 
and meaning herein suggested is perhaps the latest and 
modified opinion of Professor Sayce himself, as found 
in his recent paper in the Contemporary Review, since 
therein the ''Manda," ''Umman Manda," are described 
as "the nomad nations of Kurdistan'' {LitteWs Living 
Age, February 6, 1897, p. 371). 

With this compare also {H. C. and M,, p. 126) : "The 
Mada [Medes];, in fact, were the Kurdish tribes who 
lived eastward of Assyria, and whose territory ex- 
tended as far as the Caspian Sea" (pp. 126, 127) ; that 
"the Lydian empire stood midway between the Kim- 
merian and the Mede ;" and that "eastward the Lydian 
empire stretched to the Halys, where it met the out- 
posts of the Median monarch ; westward it had incor- 
porated into its army the wretched remains of the once 
formidable Kimmerians." But the Kimmerians were 
"Manda,'' "the nations of Kurdistan'' were "Manda,"^ 
i. e., "the Kurdish clans or tribes," being certainly part 
or the whole of these nations, and the "Madai" or 
"Medes" being "Kurdish tribes," were therefore 
"Manda" or "people of the Manda." Out, therefore, 
of this confusion there is reached the conclusion that 
the Medes emerging from the "Manda" stage, com- 
pelled the haughty and pretentious Semitic Assyrians 
and Babylonians to give to them, an Aryan people, 
their distinctive name, and in their distinctive name, 
Medes, they took their place in history as leaders and 
rulers. It was not long until they were compelled to 



32 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

share their authority and become subordinate to their 
vassal, an Achaemenian, a prince of a kindred race, 
who, under the guise of Medo-Persian, became the 
successor to imperial greatness and control of these 
venerable Semitic monarchies, then forever extin- 
guished.* 

For the truth of history, and not because the conclu- 
sions reached by Professor Sayce as to the titles of 

The nation. Cyrus at all affect the Biblical statements or 
gai\tiei'of ^he accuracy of the sacred writers, these 

^^"** conclusions may be profitably examined. In 

* Professor Kent {Jewish People^ pp. 343, 344) refers to an inscription *' coming 
from the reign of Nabonidos, which contains the first monumental account thus 
far discovered of the overthrow of the Assyrian empire by the combined attack of 
the northern hordes and the Babylonians. It also records the first advent (?) of 
the Umman Manda as an organized, united people." But they are still the *' peo- 
ple of the Manda," rightly styled by Professor Kent himself as *' northern hordes/* 
but that they were '* an organized, united people" there is in the new find no more 
evidence than is contained in the foregoing discussion. 

As prefatory to the translation given below, Professor Kent writes : ** It is pos- 
sible (though not stated) that the 'he' represents Merodach (Marduk),and I ven- 
ture to interpolate that name in the first line, which, with Nabopolassar, already 
interpolated in the printed text, sufficiently supplies the dramatis personce.^^ 

*' He (Merodach) gave to him (Nabopolassar) a helper ; he furnished for him 
a confederate. The king of the Umman Manda, who had no equal, he made sub- 
ject to his (Nabopolassar' s) command, he appointed for his aid. Above and below, 
right and left, he overthrew, like the storm flood, he took vengeance for Babylon, 
he increased the retribution (?). The king of the Umman Manda, the fearless, 
destroyed the temples of the gods of Assyria altogether, and the cities in the terri- 
tory of Akkad, which to the king of Akkad had been hostile and to his help had 
not come. He destroyed their sanctuaries, left nothing remaining, laid waste their 
cities, increased (the desolation), like a devastating hurricane. Of that which be- 
longed to the king of Babylon through the work of Marduk, whose revenge (?) is 
plundering, he took no share. To the sanctuaries of all the gods he turned gra- 
ciously. He did not on a bed of rest lay himself down " (lines 1-41). 

Evidently, on Kent's theory, Cyaxares had, as we have seen above in the 
case of Istuvegu, gathered together these " northern hordes " of nomads, and 
united them under his command for this special adventure against their common 
enemy, receiving the co-operation of the rebellious Babylonian viceroy. But there 
is herein no evidence that they had as yet any " organized" and '* united " gov- 
ernment, or fixed habitation. For a different theory see p. 46. 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 33 

the inscriptions Cyrus comes first into view as "king of 
Anzan." No inscription is quoted in which Cyrus 
claims the title of king or prince of Elam, though it 
is certain that Elam was at some time, either by force 
or voluntarily, brought into subjection to him; nor is 
there any record that clearly warrants the positive as- 
sertion that "the conqueror of Babylon was an Elamite 
prince'' (pp. 518, 519). This assertion is evidently 
based upon the following: "A lexical tablet from the 
library of Nineveh states that Anzan was the country 
known to the Semites as Elam, on the eastern border of 
Babylonia, and Gudea, one of the earliest of Sumerian 
kings whose monuments we possess, records his con- 
quest of (the city of) 'Anzan, in the country of Elam'" 
(i?. P. N. S,, vol. ii, p. 8, line 64). [To this it esems 
sufficient to say that a "city in a country" is not the 
whole of a country.] "The Elamite kings whose capi- 
tal was at Susa entitle themselves lords [suzerains] 
'of the kingdom of Anzan, kings of Shushan.' [An- 
zan and Shushan are not, therefore, one and the same 
kingdom. Anzan may, however, have been tributary 
to Shushan, or the reverse.] The inscriptions of Sen- 
nacherib distinguished Anzan from Parsuas, or Persia, 
and [not necessarily, as we shall see] imply that it 
formed part [or the whole of Elam, but] of the do- 
minions of the Elamite monarch. [Just the same as 
Parsuas, Ellipi, etc., etc.] The country of Anzan took 
its name from the city of Anzan [Anzan was not there- 
fore Elam], which does not seem to have been far dis- 
tant from the Babylonian frontier. It was the union of 



34 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Anzan and Suza or Shushan [where is the evidence of 
this union?], and of the district of which they were 
severally the centers, which created the monarchy of 
Elam. [?] [Of this statement no proof whatever is 
given, and that union, if it ever existed, may not have 
been in existence in the time of Gudea, many centuries 
having elapsed since Gudea reigned.]"^ In becoming 
kings of Anzan [a part], therefore, Cyrus and his 
predecessors became kings of Elam. [The part, there- 
fore, equals the whole. But why did they not claim to 
be kings of Elam, the whole, rather than of Anzan, a 
part ? And why do not the names of his predecessors 
appear in the list of the kings of Elam ?] They suc- 
ceeded to the ancient inheritance of the Elamite sover- 
eigns, and so lost the purity of their Persian nation- 
ality" (p. 516) . But even if this were true they did not 
thereby cease to be Persians, nor did Cyrus forfeit his 
right nor the actual succession as king of Persia. 

The inscription of Sennacherib may be given thus: 
'The men of Babylon" sent a bribe "to Umman-minan, 
king of Elam," asking his help, who assembled his 
army, collected his chariots and wagons, harnessed his 
"horses and mares to their yokes ; the nations Parzush, 
Anzan, Pasiru, Illipi, and the men of Yashan, Lakabri, 
... the cities of Beth-Kutlan, etc., etc., ... a vast 
horde of allies he led along with him" {R. P., vol. 1, 
pp. 48, 49). From these extracts it will be noted that 
Anzan, like Pasiru, Illipi, etc., was one of the allied 

♦Conjectured to have reigned between the sixth and eleventh Egyptian 
dynasties, about B. C. 4000 (R. P. N. 5., vol. i, p. 204). Hommel puts him at the 
beginning of the third millennium {Anc. Heb. Trad.^ p. 33). 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 35 

countries of the king of Elam, an ally, but not neces- 
sarily any more Elam, or part of Elam, from this state- 
ment, than were the other countries and cities named in 
the same connection and relation. 

It is somewhat singular, considering the stress that is 
laid upon this claim that Cyrus was not a Persian, but an 
Elamite, prince, that no inscription is quoted in which 
Cyrus himself assumes the title king of Elam, or that 
he had conquered Elam. Neither is there any quoted 
inscription in which the conquest of Persia is claimed, 
nor yet of Media, if the defeat of Istuvegu was not 
the defeat of the king of Media; neither does Cyrus, 
in the quoted inscriptions, claim as his, or as part of his 
dominions, by name. Media, or Elam, or Persia; and 
the only way that from these quoted inscriptions it is 
known that he was king of Persia is that Nabonidos 
so names him. There can be no question as to his royal 
Persian lineage. That is attested by his own declara- 
tion, amplified by Darius Hystaspes. As before stated, 
on his authority, the Achaemenian family divided into 
two lines after Teispes, one line as rulers of Anzan, 
the other as kings of Persia. It seems certain that 
while Anzan was ruled by the Persian Achaemenians as 
kings, it was not ruled by, or as, Elam. For among 
the many kings of Elam which are named in the in- 
scriptions, during the almost continuous warfare be- 
tween Elam and the combined or separate forces of 
Assyria and Babylonia, not one of the names mentioned 
by Cyrus as his predecessors is found. While it is pos- 
sible that Anzan was in alliance with Elam, certainly 



36 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

so against Sennacherib, and prior to the ascendency 
of the Persian princes as early as Gudea may have been 
under the rule of Elam, there is no indubitable evidence 
in the quoted inscriptions or reasonable probability that 
it was, under the Persian dynasty, consolidated with 
either Elam or Shushan. 

The Persian throne may have come to Cyrus, either 
through the declination of Hystaspes, the son of Arsa- 
mes,or have been wrested from that line by the superior- 
ity of the king of Anzan ; and the natural inclination of 
a Persian prince would lead to the taking of the title, or 
to the adding of the title originally in his house to that 
which had otherwise come to his line. There can be 
no question but that in the invasion of Babylonia by 
Cyrus both Media and Elam, as well as Anzan and 
Persia, were subject to him; and their forces being 
employed against Nabonidos satisfy all that is ex- 
pressed by Isaiah in his ''burden of the desert of the 
sea:" "Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media" (xiii, 17; 
xxi, 2) ; these being at that time the most powerful 
of the nations, restive under the overshadowing author- 
ity of the Assyrians and the Chaldeans. But they com- 
posed only a part of the great inundation from the 
north which came under the leadership of Cyrus and 
was poured out upon Mesopotamia after the defeat of 
Istuvegu, or Astyages. It is perhaps because of this 
fusion of the heterogeneous peoples from the north, 
who so readily accepted Cyrus instead of the Mede, 
that in narrating the conflict with Istuvegu the names 
of his subjects or followers are not mentioned, and the 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 37 

story runs thus: ''Istuvegu gathered (his forces) and 
marched against Cyrus, king of Anzan, and (joined) 
battle ; the army of Astyages revolted against him, and 
seized (him) with the hands. Cyrus marched against 
Ekbatana,* the royal city" (p. 500). It is significant 
that, while his capital is named, Istuvegu is not named 
in this inscription as the leader of any one people, as, 
for instance, the Medes ; but by Nabonidos in another 
inscription this mass of people is covered by the general 
term for the northerly peoples, the restless, nomadic, 
shifting "Manda." For in his preparations to suppress 
the revolt of Cyrus the Median king would certainly 
gather his forces from among his various feudatories 
and allies, among whom the nomad characteristics very 
largely predominated, and as he ruled over them all, 
and his defeat affected the relation not only of the 
Medes, but of all the more numerous peoples under his 
direction and control, a comprehensive title, "king of 
the Manda," is given him by the Chaldean king, giving 
thereby a vastly greater significance and importance to 
the victory of Cyrus than would have been given it if 
the representation had been that it was simply the vic- 
tory of the king of Anzan over the king of Media, 
instead of over "the widespread people of the Manda" 
(508). For these and other reasons which may or 
might be given it is confidently believed that "the con- 
queror of Babylon was [nof] an Elamite prince." 
It may now be suggested that the readers of The 

♦Certainly the northern city of that name, since Cyrus was northeast of Ar* 
bela when he crossed the Tigris (p. 501) in his descent upon Babylonia, 



38 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Higher Criticism and the Monuments will do well to 
remember that nothing is said in the Biblical account 
which either contradicts or affirms the statements 
claimed as taught by the secular historian, that Cyrus 
was an idolater, and had adopted or practiced the wor- 
ship of Bel and Merodach and other Babylonian gods ; 
and that, while it may be true that ''the story of Herod- 
otos was repeated by historian after historian," it is 
not true that ''the story of Daniel seemed to set its 
seal upon it'^ (p. 523), unless absolute silence as to a 
story not then written is thus unwarrantably to be so 
construed. For, as Herodotos had not written his story 
in the interim between Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus, 
when Daniel is said to have lived and written his book, 
it follows that if Daniel did write in that interim, the 
book then written could by no possibility contain any 
notice of the story of Herodotos whatever, and his 
silence is in perfect accord with the date claimed as that 
of Daniel's lifetime and authorship. This silence must, 
indeed, be urged as an incidental and, therefore, strong 
corroboration of the claim for the early date of the 
book of Daniel, for if it had been written after the era 
of Herodotos, Ctesias, Nicholas, et al., it can scarcely 
be conceived or imagined that the writer could have 
failed to put into it a Grecian coloring and given it 
more in detail, or as he found it in the books and tra- 
ditions of that later period. The only reference to the 
ending of the rule of the dynasty represented by Na- 
bonidos and Belshazzar, and the advent of the Medo- 
Persian kingdom, is found in connection with the inter- 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 39 

pretation of "the handwriting on the wall," closing 
with the words, "Thy kingdom is divided, and given to 
the Medes and Persians,'' and the statement that "in 
that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans 
slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being 
about threescore and two years old" (v, 28-31) ; state- 
ments not found in Herodotos, or other named histori- 
ans, and containing no reference whatever to Cyrus, 
but with terse accuracy supplements and explains the 
inscriptions, both he and they giving a Median ruler to 
the Chaldeans, and empire to the Persians. 

It seems, at least, very doubtful that the form of the 
inscriptions at all warrants the positive statement that 
"We now know that the siege never took Daniel and 
place'' (523). A few days before Babylon to siege and 

^ ^ "^ "^ taking of 

was taken there was fighting not far from Babylon. 
the city, and two days before the capture Sippara was 
taken "without fighting," which may simply mean that 
the results of the previous beleaguering and "fighting" 
had been such that these cities, seeing the hopelessness 
of further resistance, allowed the Persians to enter 
without further conflict ; or it is even plausibly possible 
that, operating as they had along the river, they may 
have done the very thing described in the current his- 
tories, and so diverted the course of the river as to make 
fighting altogether unnecessary. During the month of 
June they had certainly been forcing their way toward 
Babylon by "fighting." "Some persons were slain," 
and only the cities were entered "without fighting," 
the previous fighting evidently having prepared the 



40 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

way for the peaceful "taking" of the cities which had 
been awed into submission by the previous contests and 
the ostentatious display of their military resources. 
Of Merodach it is said : "The great lord to his city of 
Babylon he summoned his march; he bade him also 
take the road to Babylon ; like a friend and a comrade 
he went at his side. The weapons of his vast army, 
whose number like the waters of a river could not be 
known, were marshaled in order, and it spread itself 
at his feet. Without fighting and battle (Merodach) 
caused him to enter into Babylon" (p. 505). Neither 
the previous statements nor the confusing comparison 
for enumeration of the weapons of his vast army to 
"the waters of a river" absolutely forbid the possibility 
of previous operations, such as are described by the 
Greeks, as making fighting altogether useless for pre- 
venting the occupation of the city, and it is not im- 
possible that the reverse of the following statement is 
true, viz. : "The siege and capture of Babylon by Cyrus 
is really a reflection into the past of the actual sieges 
undergone by the city in the reigns of Darius Hystaspes 
and Xerxes" (p. 524). In fact, taking Isa. xliv, 2y, 
"The Lord saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up 
thy rivers," or Jer. li, 36, "I will dry up her sea, and 
make her springs dry," there is more ground for as- 
suming that the action of Cyrus in thus "drying up" 
by diverting the course of the river suggested to his 
contemporary subject, Darius, son of Hystaspes, the 
course which was afterward, when on the throne, un- 
successfully pursued by him in his attempt at reducing 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 41 

the city ''without fighting;'' this result under Cyrus, 
this weakness, pusillanimity of the defenders of Baby- 
lon at this time, being described by both these prophets, 
Herodotos also, consistently with himself, asserting 
that Darius copied after Cyrus, as will be hereinafter 
shown. 

It is to be remarked as highly suggestive that Daniel 
names no king of Babylon or of the Chaldeans as sub- 
sequent to or as the successor of Darius the Median, 
Cyrus himself having assumed the title ''king of Baby- 
lon" and established that city as the capital of the em- 
pire. As subordinate to him, Cambyses, in this third 
year of Cyrus (536), is, as we shall see, conspicuous 
in the ceremonies at the funeral of the dethroned queen, 
and it is this third year of Cyrus which in Daniel is last 
mentioned; he himself, apparently, having retired, per- 
haps for greater privacy, somewhere on the Tigris, 
outside of Babylon (ch. x, 4). 

In the matters thus far treated nothing has been 
found necessarily inconsistent with what is written in 
Holy Scripture; rather, the sacred writings and the 
inscriptions seem to be mutually confirmatory, or illus- 
trative one of the other. We turn now to matters 
more directly pertaining to the chronology and history 
of the period, and the persons named by the Biblical 
writers as living in the beginning of the Persian do- 
minion. Among these is Darius the Median, to whom 
attention may now be directed in an endeavor to his 
identification. 



42 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 



II* War of Cyrus with Astyages (Istuvegu), and 
Date of His Overthrow 

The tablet on which the story of the conflict between 
Cyrus and Istuvegu (or Astyages) and also of the tak- 
ing of Babylon is inscribed seems to have been chrono- 
logically arranged, and is termed "The Annalistic 
Tablet of Cyrus" (pp. 499-503). Of this Professor 
Sayce writes: "The beginning of the tablet is unfor- 
tunately broken. Where the sense first becomes clear, 
mention is made of the country of Hamath, in which 
the Babylonian army had encamped during the month 
of Tebet (December). In the following year the army 
marched to Mount Amanus and the Mediterranean." 
After this occurs the story of the victory of Cyrus over 
Astyages. No year or date is given in this or the pre- 
ceding fragments of the inscription. But a subsequent 
paragraph which seems to have no connection with or 
reference to this victory over Astyages, or, indeed, to 
Cyrus at all, is dated in the seventh year of Nabonidos ; 
and from this it has been inferred that the defeat and 
dethronement of Astyages (Istuvegu) took place in the 
sixth year of Nabonidos, B. C. 550-549. But the indi- 
cations are that the war between Persia and Media, 
which resulted in the overthrow of Astyages, and al- 
most at the beginning of which Cambyses, the father 
of Cyrus, was slain, was ended in a single year. This 
death thus early made Cyrus king of Anzan, and the 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 43 

overthrow of Astyages at its close gave him in the same 
year the throne of Media. But the trend of opinion 
seems to be that Cyrus reigned twenty-nine years. ( So 
Rawlinson, Anc. Mon., vol. iii, p. 388.) The date given 
by Ptolemy for his last year is B. C. 529, from which it 
follows that his first year was B. C. 558, which was, 
according to Ptolemy, the third year (558) Fail of As- 
before the accession of Nabonidos to the ^^• 
throne of Babylon (555). If, therefore, the death 
of Cambyses, by which Cyrus at once became 
king of Anzan, and the fall of Astyages, by which later 
he became king of Media, occurred in the same year, 
the true date of the paragraph containing the story of 
this victory must be this earlier year (558), and not the 
sixth year of Nabonidos (550-549). 

An indication of this earlier date for the dethrone- 
ment of Astyages may be found in an inscription of 
Nabonidos (pp. 507-509, and R. P. N. S., vol. v, p. 169, 
etc.), from which we learn that "E-khul-khul, the 
temple of the Moon-god which is in the city of Kharran 
(Haran), had been destroyed by the people of the 
Manda, and with it the city of Haran had also been 
caused to go into ruin." As related to this ruin, Na- 
bonidos writes : "At the beginning of my long-enduring 
reign a dream was revealed to me by Merodach, the 
great lord, and Sin, the light of heaven and earth ; they 
stood on either side of me. Merodach spake with me : 
'O Nabonidos, king of Babylon, with the horses of 
thy chariot, bring bricks, build E-khul-khul ; let Sin, 
the great lord, establish his seat within it.' Reverently 



44 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

I spoke to the lord of the gods, Merodach : The temple 
which thou orderest to be built, the people of the Man- 
da surround it, and noisome are their forces/ Mero- 
dach again spoke with me : 'The people of the Manda 
of whom thou speakest, they, their land, and the kings 
who marched beside them (their allies) exist no more. 
In the third year, when it came, he caused him to come, 
and Cyrus, the king of Anzan, his little servant, with 
his small army, overthrew the widespread people of the 
Manda. Istuvegu (Astyages), the king of the people 
of the Manda, he captured and brought him prisoner 
to his own country' '' (R, P. AT. S., vol. v, p. 169). To 
this Professor Sayce appends a note, suggesting all 
after the words "exist no more,'' to be "future ;" i. e., 
"in the third year when it shall arrive, I will cause them 
to come, and Cyrus, the king of Anzan," etc. This form 
is followed substantially in H, C, and M. and in his 
article in the new Bible Dictionary, But the lines 24, 
25 preceding are not changed, and certainly declare 
what had already happened, and of which Nabonidos 
was ignorant, namely, that three years before "the be- 
ginning of his long-lasting reign" Merodach had 
caused the clearing away of the "noisome" Manda. 
It is to be understood not as a prediction, but as a 
statement of an already accomplished result. For the 
order of Merodach to Nabonidos was for immediate 
obedience, at once to go, rebuild at Haran ; and the only 
objection of the king was based upon what he believed 
to be the actual existing condition, that the Manda were 
still there in force. It will be seen that immediate 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 45 

obedience to this imperative order, if matters were as 
Nabonidos supposed, would necessarily have involved 
him in a serious war with a great empire, with all 
chances against him, and that his force would be over- 
powered. A defeat of Istuvegu and a withdrawal of 
the Manda under Cyrus, if not to occur until "the third 
year" from the present, could give no assurance of 
present or immediate success, nor be any relief from 
present embarrassment, nor protection from dangers 
now impending. But the information that the removal 
of this ''noisome'' force had taken place so long as three 
years before this order was given at once showed that 
the way was open for instantaneous action and obedi- 
ence. That this interpretation accords well with the 
Ptolemaic canon and other chronological data may be 
seen in the appended Chronological Conspectus. Tak- 
ing Ptolemy's date (B. C. 555) for the beginning of the 
reign of Nabonidos, the third year subsequent to the 
overthrow of Astyages (in B. C. 558), when the death 
of his father during the w^ar had made vacant for 
Cyrus, then forty years old, the throne of Anzan, and 
we have, as above stated, the true beginning of the 
twenty-nine years' reign of this "Great King," as well 
of Anzan as of the vast empire of the Medes, which, ac- 
cording to the current histories, included Elam and the 
Persian kingdom of the Achsemenidae. 



46 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

The Bearing of the Newly Found "Stele" of Na- 

BONIDOS ON THE PRECEDING DaTE, B. C. 558. 

The Rev. C. J. Ball, in his late work, Light from 
the East, represents that Sin in anger had caused the 
The inscrip- *'Umman-Manda folk'' to make a raid and 
^^^"' destroy his house in Haran, and that Bel 
"took pity on the city and house, in the beginning of my 
(Nabonidos's) eternal reign." Merodach and Sin di- 
rected him to restore the ruined "dwelling" in Haran. 
"Reverently, I (Nabonidos) spake unto Merodach, 
'That house which thou hast commanded to build, the 
Umman-Manda folk have encompassed it, and their 
forces are strong/ But Merodach spake unto me: 
*The Umman-Manda which thou hast mentioned, they, 
their country, and their kings that marched with them, 
are no more,' In the third year, when it came, they 
(i. e., the gods) caused him (i. e., Cyrus) to march 
forth, and Cyrus king of Anzan, his (Merodach's) 
young servant, with his few troops routed the numer- 
ous Umman-Manda folk" (pp. 208, 209). 

It will be seen that this translation differs from that 
of Professor Sayce, both in the supplying of the per- 
Eendering sonal names and the distribution to them of 
changed, ^j^^ several parts. Cyrus in this is the young 
servant of Merodach, and not of Istuvegu or Astyages, 
who thereby fails of recognition as his suzerain. These 
differences, however, do not materially affect the essen- 
tials of my statements and conclusions in the foregoing 
discussion or investigation on the basis of the other 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 47 

rendering. It still remains true that in the beginning 
of the reign of Nabonidos he was told that at that very 
time, to wit, in the beginning of the first year of his 
reign, the *'Umman-Manda, they, their country, and 
the kings that marched with them, are no more," 
Merodach, according to this rendering, then adds that : 
"In the third year, when it came, they (i. e., the two 
gods) caused him (i. e., Cyrus) to march forth,'' etc. 
(ut sup,), by whom the Umman-Manda folk were 
routed. As Merodach had just assured Nabonidos 
that the Manda had already lost their country, and that 
the kings which marched with them "were no more," 
and now Nabonidos affirms that Cyrus was the "serv- 
ant" of these gods, or their agent in doing this, it neces- 
sarily follows that what he had done for them had either 
been done in that year, but before this conversation 
was had, or some time previously to the beginning of 
that first year of this dreamer's reign. Fortunately, 
however, he solves the problem by fixing the date as in 
the preceding third year. This, when it came, was 
seized upon by the gods as the opportune time in which 
to avenge upon the "Umman-Manda folk" their sacri- 
legious destruction of Sin's favorite abode. According- 
ly, being thus assured that the "noisome Manda" had, 
in the third previous year, been overthrown, his fears 
took flight, and he at once prepared for the execution 
of their commands. He certainly did not wait for or 
during a subsequent three years, or for a subsequent 
third year, for the Light from the East quotes him as 
ejaculating exultingly : "I tarried not, I drew not back. 



48 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

I was not idle. I put my numerous troops on the 
march; from the land of Gaza, on the borders of the 
land of Egypt, from the Upper Sea, beyond the Eu- 
phrates, unto the Lower Sea,'' etc. (p. 209). 

It seems, therefore, that I must retain my contention 
that the overthrow of Astyages, and the rout of the 
Former in- ''trekking" hordes, which, with his own 
firmed^as 1:o Medes, were under his command, took place 
^^^^* in cir. B. C. 558. The distinguished author 

of the Light from the East, taking the date to be the 
third year subsequently (i. e., 553), instead of the third 
year preceding the beginning of the "eternal reign" of 
Nabonidos, writes : "This inscription enables us to de- 
termine precisely the date of the fall of Nineveh. In 
Column X it is said that fifty-four years had elapsed 
since the ruin of the temple of Sin at Haran by the 
Umman-Manda, or Medes, when Nabonidos set about 
restoring it. As he relates elsewhere (see p. 208), he 
was divinely bidden to undertake this work in the first 
year of his reign (i. e., in B. C. 556) [elsewhere 555], 
but was only able to do it three years later, when Cyrus 
had broken the power of the Umman-Manda (i. e., in 
553). Adding 54 to this date, we get B. C. 607 as the 
year of the fall of Nineveh, and the final ruin of As- 
syria" (p. 212). Of the apparent assumption that the 
Umman-Manda were indubitably and always Medes, 
it may be said, in passing, that it seems to have been 
herein shown, by the usage of this name, that, while in 
Assyrian and Babylonian generalizations of foreign and 
especially of northern ethnic races the Medes were very 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 49 

often counted among the ''Umman-Manda folk/' yet 
it is also evident that all Manda were not "Medes." 

Without wavering in the belief that B. C. 607, as 
otherwise ascertained, is the true date for the fall of 
Nineveh, it is very evident that if we must Date of fail 

i 1 1. iiri ...of Nineveh 

depend upon this method of determining it affirmed ty 

^ ^ ° Jeremiali's 

there must be positive proof that the ruin prediction, 
of the temple in Haran and that of Nineveh occurred 
in the selfsame year. Now, so far as any such proof is 
apparent in this book — and the same may be said of 
a similar method in Hastings's new Dictionary of the 
Bible (vol. i, p. 190) — it is claimed to be found in the 
following, from an inscription of Nabonidos : "Column 
I, 1,7. To Babylon he went, he laid the temples in the 
dust, ruined the sculptures, destroyed the tablets of the 
divine laws, took the hand of the Prince Merodach, and 
brought him to Asshur. According to the wrath of the 
god he did unto the land. The Prince Merodach re- 
laxed not his anger ; for twenty-one years in Asshur he 
occupied his dwelling place. After days (i. e., a long 
while) the appointed time came ; then was appeased the 
wrath of the king of the gods, the lords (sing.?) : of 
E-SAGGiL and Babylon he was mindful, the abode of 
his lordship. The king of Assyria who in Merodach's 
wrath had wrought the ruin of the land, the son the 
issue of his own body, with the sword smote him. Col- 
umn II. ... as a helper He (Merodach?), as an ally He 
made him possess. The king of the Umman-Manda, 
who had not an equal, he [Nabopolassar?] subdued; 

at his bidding he made him march to his assistance. 
4 



so Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

[Abojve and below, [right] and left, like a flood he 
overwhelmed; he avenged Babylon; he multiplied 
corpses (lit.^ bones). The king of the Umman-Manda, 
the fearless, ruined all the temples of the god[s] of 
the land of Assyria ; and the cities on the border of the 
land of Accad, which had revolted against the king of 
Accad, and had not gone to his assistance, he destroyed, 
and of their sanctuaries (walls?) he left not any; he 
laid waste their cities. The king of Babylon, like a 
flood, carried beyond bounds the work of Merodach, 
who had intrusted him with sway. He put not his 
hands to the commands of any (other) gods. He pros- 
pered, and lay not down on the bed of idleness or re- 
pose'' (pp. 212-214). 

The account given by Hommel in Hastings's new 
Dictionary of the Bible reads thus : *Tt was in his day 
HommePs (^' ^'' Sin-shar-iskun's) that the swamping 
- ^ceo^^t- of interior Asia by the Sakean Scythians 
took place. This was only the prelude to the end. As 
a newly discovered cylinder of the Babylonian king Na- 
bonidos relates, fifty-four years before the consecration 
of the temple of Sin in Haran, which had been de- 
stroyed by the Manda hordes, a Median king, who was 
probably called Arbak, [Arbaces?] working in conjunc- 
tion, as the cylinder just mentioned clearly proves, with 
Nabopolassar (Belesys), razed to the ground the fa- 
mous Assyrian capital. Nineveh probably fell into the 
hands of the Medes in 607, after a two years' siege, 
since the completion of the temple of Sin seems to be- 
long to somewhere about the third year of Nabonidos 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus SI 

(553)." To this a note is appended: ''A clear allusion 
to this name ( Arbak) is found in Nabonidos's cylinder 
inscription: 'Vengeance took (iriba tuk-ti) the fearless 
king of Manda" (vol. i, p. 190). 

From the same inscription both Ball and Hommel ar- 
rive at the conclusion that the third year of the other 
inscription must be counted downward, and ^^.^^ ^^^ 
that the sacking or ruin of Sin's temple was Nineveh b.c! 
in the same year as the ruin of Nineveh, the ^^' 
date being thought to be clearly fixed by these inscrip- 
tions. There is, however, good reason to doubt this. 
From the same inscriptions, I have put the date of that 
ruin at B. C. 558. The name Nineveh is not found at 
all in the inscription. The king to whom reference is 
made in the preceding paragraph of the tablet is, in- 
disputably, Sennacherib, and what was written im- 
mediately after is lost by the mutilation of the stele. 
The inserted name, Nabopolassar, is a conjectural in- 
terpolation by the translator, and may or may not be 
correct. If the uncapitalized ''he" and "his'' refer to 
this person, then the "Umman-Manda,'' whom, it is 
said, "he subdued," could not have been Medes. For 
the Medes, certainly, never were "subdued" 

Another 

by Nabopolassar, nor compelled to do "his name than 
bidding." If, however, it is contended that ^^''^^ ^'i 
they must here be recognized as Medes, then ^^^^^^* 
some other name than that of Nabopolassar, or with 
that name, must be inserted. Possibly the name of 
Esar-haddon might be suggested, who certainly did 
subdue the Medes, and whose "few years of sov- 



52 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

ereignty," writes McCurdy, "were full of action, 
crowned with rare success'' (vol. ii, p. 348) — a state- 
ment in singular agreement with the tribute of this in- 
scription to the ruler to w^hom reference is made : "He 
prospered, and lay not down on the bed of idleness and 
repose." 

Column III is unfortunately lost. It is, however, 

somewhat suggestive that when the narrative becomes 

Esar-had- readable on Column IV the writer has 

don not ad- 
missible, reached the reign of Nergal-sharezer, the 

murderer of the son of Nebuchadnezzar. It is not at 
all improbable that Column III contained the story of 
Assurbanipal, the son of Esar-haddon, and thus was 
given a continuous synopsis of the Assyrio-Babylonian 
history down to Nabonidos, who in Columns V, VI and 
X introduces himself as the writer, and, as in his other 
inscriptions, narrates a dream and tells of himself and 
his own doings. But the difficulties which confront a 
satisfactory interpretation of the remainder of this par- 
agraph seem not to be lessened by substituting Esar- 
haddon for Nabopolassar, but rather, thereby, seem to 
be increased. 

A substitution of the name of Assurbanipal, the son 
and successor of Esar-haddon, who fought success- 

Assurbani- ^^^^Y against the Medes, and in whose later 
reqi'dreT^^^^^ Y^ars the Kimmerian (Manda) greatly 

itions. wasted and harassed the borders of the 

empire, may give more satisfactory results.* To this 
end we may, without violence to the inscription, thus 

♦See Rogers^s History of Assyria^ vol. ii, pp. 258. 277. 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus S3 

read and interpret it. After the defeat and death of 
his rebellious brother, there appears the name of Kan- 
dalanu* in Ptolemy's list as king of Babylon, who 
doubtless had the usual jurisdiction of the southern 
province of Accad and Sumer. As a helper, and in 
his semi-independence, designated by Merodach as 
ally, he was bidden to march to the assistance of his 
suzerain in the sudden emergency and peril occasioned 
by the bold and unexpected inroad of the First Mem- 
con federated northern tribes under the ^^i^^^-sion. 
leadership of the Median Phraortes. This afforded 
opportunity for the usual insubordination of the south- 
ern cities and population, of which they seemed largely 
to have availed themselves, refusing to march with the 
viceroy of Babylon against the Umman-Manda under 
their Median leader, thus throwing their influence 
against the empire. With the forces at his command, 
the Assyrian king marched against the invaders, and 
in a fiercely contested battle overwhelmingly defeated 
them, and cut to pieces their army, their Medes de- 
king Phraortes being among the slain. ^^^^^• 
Subdued and dejected by their great loss, the invaders 
under Cyaxeres, the son of Phraortes, were driven out 
of Assyria, the "Great King" returning in triumph to 
Nineveh, his helper and ally, the viceroy of Babylon, 
Accad and Sumer, returning to wreak his Kandaianu 
vengeance upon his recalcitrant subjects, cad^and^u- 
"Above, below, right and left, like a flood he "^^''• 

*The identification of Kandalanu with Assurbanipal is not satisfactory to 
Oppert, Sayce and Hommel, and may therefore be disregarded. (See Rogers's 
History of Assyria^ vol. ii, p. 397.) 



54 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

overwhelmed them. He avenged [loyal] Babylon. [For 
the rest] He multiplied corpses [the slain]." He ad- 
ministered punishment after the most cruel fashion of 
his master, of a most cruel and sanguinary age. Mean- 
while the Manda people, under their fearless king, 
were pressing along the northern borders of the em- 
pire, looting and ruining the temples of the gods of 
Assyria and the cities on the borders of the land of 
Accad. Their revolt against the king of Accad, and 
their reluctance or refusal to march against them in 
their late invasion, did not constitute them his allies, 
or secure them favor. He understood their motive 
was not to help his people, but that they might gain 

The Manda their independence. "Their cities, there- 
raid the bor- 
der cities. fore, he destroyed, and of their sanctuaries 

[walls] he left not any — He laid waste their cities.'' 
So also the king of Babylon "like a flood carried 
beyond bounds the work of Merodach. He put not 
his hands to the commands of any other gods. He 
prospered, and lay not down on the bed of idleness 
and repose." (Light from the East, p. 214.) 

But this victory and the pacification secured by vio- 
lence did not end the misfortunes of the Assyrian. 
n,.o^o.^o Neither Manda nor Mede abandoned their 

i^yax ares 

second^inva^ purpose of entering what was to them, as 
^^^^' was Canaan to the Israelites, the land of 

promise ; and as appears from the inscriptions as thus 
viewed, they continued to harass the imperial borders, 
and lay waste its cities and temples. The ready suc- 
cess which the roving bands obtained in their raids 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 5S 

both north and south tended to lessen their awe of the 
great empire, and emboldened them for another attempt 
at its conquest. In the interval between his defeat and 
a second and more determined effort, Cyaxeres, the 
Ahasuerus of Daniel, the son and successor of 
Phraortes, was carefully consolidating his people and 
establishing over them a government more like those 
of the nations with which they were now in contact, and 
organizing under thorough discipline an army well 
skilled in the warlike art, as then known, sufficient in 
its training, valor and numbers to be able to compete 
on the field for victory with the great armies of Nine- 
veh or Babylon. 

Meantime Assurbanipal had passed away. Kanda- 
lanu had also disappeared. Assur-etil-ilani, a son of 
Assurbanipal, had just ascended the Assyr- ^ change 
ian throne. Another ruler, Nabopolassar and^Ba^yk)" 
by name, was in place at Babylon, a vassal "^^^ ^^^^^' 
monarch holding his service and allegiance due to the 
"Great King," but evidently restive under the yoke, 
and ready to avail himself of any opportunity that 
might offer to weaken or destroy its hold upon him or 
his subjects. 

The preparation of the Median king having been 
completed, a change of monarchs favored his object, 
and a vast host of confederated tribes or ^q^q^ ^nd 
clans was set in motion, swept down slege^toNm^ 
through the mountain passes on their way ^^^^* 
toward the capital, devastating the land, laying waste 
the cities, despoiling and destroying the temples, and 



56 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

with resistless fury reached the great city, and entered 
upon its siege. 

The Assyrian king was now involved in great diffi- 
culties. Revolt was in the purpose and disposition 
of his subjects, if not everywhere actually existent. 
His most powerful subordinate, he of Babylon, 
could not be relied upon to assist him heartily in 
his hour of necessity, and destruction seemed inevi- 
table. 

At this critical juncture a counter inroad of the 
Scyths, a people fresh from the farther north, rushed 
Siege raised ^^^^ ^^^^ Media, and the Mede was com- 
invasimi^^o^ pelled hastily to abandon the siege, and 
Media. return with all speed to save his own king- 

dom. Foiled in his attempt upon Nineveh by this 
irruption of the terrible Scythians (Sakean Scyths), 
on his arrival in Media he met with disaster, was 
defeated in battle, and compelled to submit himself 
and his country for several years to the destructive 
rule of these Manda people, a later evolution from 
Media con- the northern wilds than the "widespread 

qiiered by 

Scyths. people of the Manda who had fought 

under his banners. So opportunely did this relief 
come that it has been suggested that the Assyrian 
king may have invited these barbarians to descend 
upon Media. In any case, whether it was the result 
of a deliberate plan for his relief, or was the spon- 
taneous movement of a nomadic people seeking better 
lands and more genial clime, it is certain that their 
sudden and, to the Medes, unexpected advent saved 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 57 

the empire from present ruin, and for several years 
held the Medes in subordination. 

During this time of the Scythian (Mandean) dom- 
ination of Media, the Assyrian kings retained, at least 
nominally, their sovereignty; but their new ^^^ ^.^^^ 
helpers, or "alHes" (with their king ^^Ar- ^^^rlnffeth 
bak," if Hommel is right), "did little but '''^^^^^''^ 
plunder and ravage in every direction," ruining all the 
temples of his gods, and laying waste his cities. In 
this view the ruin of the Assyrian cities, among which 
at that time Haran would be found, was accomplished 
through a series of years extending to a time perhaps 
earlier than the peace of Alyattes; and there is not 
much probability, and no certainty, in the date B. C. 
612, as fixed by the fifty-four years of desolation. For 
a part of the five years prior to the fall of gcyths' aiii- 
Nineveh, in the enfeebled condition of the ^"^^* 
empire, it, with many other cities, was doubtless held 
by the Scythian Manda, but later came under the yoke 
of the Medes, who in the division of the Assyrian 
assets seem to have retained Assyria proper, and north- 
ern Mesopotamia on a line which Nabonidos recog- 
nized as including Haran. 

The change from Assur-etil-ilani to the rule of Sin- 

sarra-iskun, which took place during the Scythian 

domination, seems not to have improved sin-sarra- 

the situation; and when the Medes had Assyrian 

king. Nine- 
regained their ascendency, and had found veh taken. 

Nabonidos readily co-operating in their plans, their 

combined forces advanced into Assyria, took posses- 



58 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

sion of its cities and lands outside of Nineveh, and 
after a siege of uncertain duration, the city fell into 
their hands, and the Assyrian empire was dismem- 
bered, and ceased to exist. 

The northern cities, which under the later kings of 
Assyria had been seized and held by the Scythian 
Manda, continued to be occupied by them when the 
Medes regained the mastery, and was still in their 
hands, as subjects of the Median empire, when the 
Persian revolt occurred. 

In his effort to suppress the revolt of the Persians 

(Parsuans) the Median king had evidently summoned 

Medes and to his assistance (mobilized) the entire force 

Manda join 

Cyrus. of Manda and Medes available within his 

dominions. This necessarily led to the evacuation of 
the cities, especially of those which were not likely to 
be attacked by the enemy, which was certainly the case 
in relation to the Persians, who in the contest with 
Media would be far to the eastward of Haran. This 
resulted in the gathering together of a vast multitude, 
among whom there was no common interest and agglu- 
tination. The result was, therefore, vastly different 
from what the King Astyages (Istuvegu), justly de- 
nominated ''king of the Manda — heterogeneous hordes 
— expected. Instead of a decisive victory he met with 
a disastrous defeat, and the entire mass after the defeat 
seems at once to have adhered to the fortunes of the 
victorious Cyrus, by whom they were speedily led to 
fresh fields of plunder and pillage. Thus they were 
abundantly compensated for the loss sustained by their 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 59 

evacuation of cities long since despoiled, and now for a 
time left to their own fate, while they marched under 
new auspices to newer and richer conquests. The rest- 
less ambition of Cyrus, indeed, gave them ample em- 
ployment, far away from the cities thus left unde- 
fended. 

At this time Nabonidos had not usurped the throne, 
and of this defenseless condition of the cities along 
the northern border it was possible that he Nabonidos 
mieht have remained in isrnorance. Until ran, repairs 

^ ^ , tlie temple, 

he had taken into his hands the kingship of ^- c 555. 
Babylon he could, of course, do nothing, nor could 
the knowledge be of any advantage to a mere subject. 
If known to his immediate predecessors, no use of the 
knowledge was made, since they "engaged in no war- 
like expeditions.^' In the third year after this evacua- 
tion the gods (priests) saw their opportunity in the ac- 
cession of an active and adventurous prince, his first 
year being contemporaneous with this third year after 
the ''march away" of Cyrus and the Manda. In this 
third year of the cities' defenselessness, the first year 
of his reign, the true situation was revealed to Nabo- 
nidos, and the information coming to him when the 
forces of Cyrus were at a safe distance and otherwise 
employed gave him the opportunity to possess himself 
of Haran, and restore to its former magnificence the 
favorite abode of the great Sin. In haste, therefore, he 
recalled from Syria and places adjacent to Haran 
forces sufficient to seize and hold the city, and pro- 
ceeded to execute the order of the king of the gods. 



60 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

That such an act of unprovoked aggression led to the 
subsequent invasion of Babylonia on the return of 
Cyrus is not known, but may naturally be supposed not 
to have been passed over in silence, nor without an 
effort to avenge the insulted dignity of the ''Great 
King." 

Thus we may, it is hoped, arrive at a consistent inter- 
pretation of this inscription, but do not therein find 
any absolutely positive datum for fixing the year of the 
fall of Nineveh. (See also note to page 32.) 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 61 



EL The Persons and Other Matters Pertaining 
to the Taking of Babylon and the Extinc- 
tion of the Babylono-Chaldean Empire 

As to the persons and other matters pertaining to 
and concerned in the taking of Babylon, it is attested 
by the "Annalistic Tablet of Cyrus" that Gobryas 

^ .... - takes Baby- 

Cyrus was not himself present, nor at the ion in the ab- 
sence of Cy- 
head of the victorious army when the city rus. 

was taken (p. 502). This honor fell to the lot of 
Gobryas (Ugbaru), the governor of the country of 
Kurdistan, described by Schrader as a ^'Babylono- 
Median race" (vol. ii, p. 229). According to Daniel 
and Josephus, "Darius the Median'' took or received 
the kingdom; rather, was made ''king of the Chal- 
deans,'' appointed to that office. Josephus further in- 
forms us that Darius had another name among the 
Greeks. The story of the taking of Babylon as found 
in the cuneiform inscriptions is less in detail than are 
the accounts current with the later secular historians, 
but is somewhat supplemental to the brev- Cuneiform 

; ^ ^ story supi^le- 

ity of Daniel. In neither the cuneiform nor ments Daniel, 
the Biblical narrative are there any indications of a se- 
vere struggle, either in attack or resistance, when the 
actual entry into the city was gained. On the con- 
trary, the inscriptions expressly say that "without fight- 
ing and battle (Merodach) caused him to enter into 



62 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Babylon, his city of Babylon he spared ; all the men of 
Babylon, all of them [ ?] and the whole of Sumer and 
Accad, the nobles and the high priests, bowed them- 
selves beneath him ; they kissed his feet ; they rejoiced 
at his sovereignty; their countenance shone'' (p. 505). 
This, however, refers perhaps not so much to the cap- 
ture of the city as to the time when subsequently Cyrus 
himself came, four months after it had fallen into the 
hands of his commander, Gobryas, and had been under 
his government. But the absence of fighting when the 
city was taken by Gobryas is also claimed. ''On the 
i6th day of Tammuz [June], Gobryas, the governor of 
the country of Kurdistan (Gutium), and the soldiers of 
Cyrus entered Babylon without fighting'' (502). It 
was not until the third day of Marchesvan (October) 
that Cyrus entered Babylon. Of this entry he says: 
"When I entered Babylon in peace, with joy and glad- 
ness I founded the seat of dominion in the palace of 
princes." The palace, therefore, was without its king 
or prince. 

With this description of the taking of the city the 

Biblical writers are in entire harmony. Jeremiah (li, 

Biblical 30-38) writes that: 'The mighty men of 

moiiize with Babvlon have forborne to fight, they have 

the inscrip- ' < , 1 . . 1 1 1 

tions. remained in their hold; their might hath 

failed; they became as women; they have burned 
her dwelling places; her bars are broken. One 
post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to 
meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his 
city is taken on every quarter; and that the passages 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 63 

are stopped, and the reeds they have burned with fire, 
and the men of war are affrighted." So, too, the simple 
brief record of Daniel favors still more strongly the in- 
scriptions. It says nothing about any siege ; it does not 
say that the city was taken by night or by day, by 
stratagem or by assault, or in words that the city was 
taken at all; only inferentially conveys the idea. It 
simply states two incidents that occurred on the night 
of the day in which he had interpreted the handwriting 
on the wall for Belshazzar, evidently the second ruler 
of the kingdom, of which Daniel as a reward had been 
proclaimed ''third ruler.'' ''In that night was Belshaz- 
zar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the 
Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and 
two years old" (vs. 30, 31). 

There is nothing in the inscriptions that is at va- 
riance with these words, as we shall further endeavor to 
show. It is certain that Nabonidos, king of Belshazzar 
Babylonia, the father of Belshazzar, was not of^tSe king- 
known by the Persians to be in Babylon ^^^' 
when it was by them entered. He had been in Sippara 
two days previously, from which, when it was taken, 
he had fled. He was afterward "captured after being 
bound in Babylon ;" perhaps captured outside of Baby- 
lon, but brought and delivered in Babylon after he had 
been bound (502). It is also absolutely certain that 
Belshazzar, who had been the acting king, was neither 
in the palace nor in Babylon when Cyrus some four 
months later entered the city. It is now absolutely cer- 
tain that Nabonidos had a son named Belshazzar, his 



64 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

schrader's fii*stborn, of whom Schrader writes : "That 
opinion. ^j^jg firstborn son of Nabonidos occupied a 
distinguished position next to the king during his Hfe- 
time, and especially at the fall of the empire, has been 
recently established by an inscription on a clay tablet 
containing the 'Annals of Nabonidos.' ... As early as 
the seventh year the crown prince, the son of the king, 
was accompanying the army in north Babylonia along 
with the chief men of the empire. . . . Perhaps 
while the father confronted the foe in the open field the 
son was appointed to defend the capital. On the cap- 
ture of the town the crown prince lost his life, meeting 
with a more honorable end . . . than his father, who 
fell into captivity" (vol. ii, p. 132). 

Professor Sayce admits that "since we are told not 

only of the fate of Nabonidos, but also of the death of 

g ,g j^_ his wife, it seems probable that Belshazzar 

tile account. ^^5 ^^^j [- |j ^^ ^^^ j.^^^^ ^^^^ q^^,^^ 

entered Babylon he had already disappeared from his- 
tory'' [!!] (526). To this fact the Biblical account 
bears emphatic and distinct corroboration, both as to 
time and manner. Neither does it seem possible that a 
theory of Biblical contradictions of the inscriptions can 
be sustained or established by such inconsiderate state- 
ments as that "the Biblical story implies Babylon was 
taken by storm; at all events, it expressly states that 
^the king of the Chaldeans was slain.' Nabonidos, 
the Babylonian king, however, was not slain, and Cy- 
rus entered Babylon in peace" (526). The truth is 
that Daniel gives no description at all as to the taking 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 65 

of Babylon, nor is Jeremiah necessarily to be interpret- 
ed as ^'implying that Babylon was taken by storm." 
On the contrary, he expressly says that the Babylonians 
did not fight, made no resistance, and where there is no 
resistance the need of a "storm'' does not clearly ap- 
pear. Of course, there was great confusion; messen- 
gers from every direction would naturally make their 
hurried way toward the palace with the news of the 
disaster ; but such "posts" would not have been needed 
if a general assault had taken place, or the city had 
been otherwise taken than by the silent march of the 
hostile forces through the open gates — opened doubt- 
less by collusion and conspiracy. And certainly Daniel 
is not in conflict with the inscriptions, nor in contradic- 
tion thereto. His first statement that Belshazzar was 
slain contradicts nothing in the inscriptions, but since 
they show that he lived they certainly render confirma- 
tion to the statement that he met with death, and as 
they say nothing about how he met it, they are not in 
evidence against one who tells the time and manner 
of his death. Daniel does not say that the ''Babylonian 
king, Nabonidos, was slain." He simply states that 
"Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans" was slain, a 
title which seems not to have been given to Nabonidos, 
and for these closing years seems to have been peculiar 
to Belshazzar and his immediate successor, Darius the 
Median. Daniel distinctly names with the title, that 
there may be no possibility of confusion or mistake, 
that the person who was slain was Belshazzar, now 

known from the monuments to be the son of Naboni- 
5 



66 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

dos, and who in his book is recognized as ''king of the 
Chaldeans/' and whom he thus entitles, doubtless on 
proper authority, and in consistency with the monu- 
mental discoveries and the indication given in the fact 
that he himself had been made third ruler in the king- 
dom, he himself giving the name of the second ruler, 
Belshazzar, and his own name as the third, the monu- 
ments supplying the name Nabonidos as the chief or 
first ruler of the kingdom. No reference to Belshazzar 
is made later than to the third year of his reign, after 
which reference he and Gobryas, as well, disappear 
simultaneously from history, as well from the monu- 
ments as from Daniel (viii, i). It is, however, signifi- 
cant of the accuracy of Daniel that in every year from 
the seventh to the seventeenth year of which there is 
given a detailed account in the inscriptions there oc- 
curs the statement, or its equivalent, that 'The king 
(Nabonidos) was in Teva ;" "The king in the month of 
Nisan [the first month of the year] did not go to 
Babylon/' "The king did not go to Babylon in the 
month of Nisan" (p. 500, etc.). There is, therefore, 
no violence done by the inference that his son took or 
was acting with kingly authority in his stead. 

It is, therefore, not at all improbable that in the three 
years immediately preceding its fall the crown prince, 
resident in Babylon, was made king of the Chaldeans, 
or Babylon, while his father was in the camp or for- 
tress above Sippara, where it is certain his mother was 
living, his wife being with her son Belshazzar in Baby- 
lon (p. 500, Dan. v). From the seventh to the eleventh 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 67 

year of the reign of Nabonidos the king's son is named 
in the inscriptions as being with the nobles and the 
army ^'in the country of Accad/' but no mention of him 
is made in the detail of the seventeenth or last year. 
It is certain that Nabonidos was in Sippara two days 
before Babylon was taken. It seems to have been not 
at all uncommon for oriental kings, especially when in 
warfare and at the head of their army, to join with 
themselves the eldest son, conferring upon him the 
powers and title of king in the government of the 
capital. So, therefore, Nabonidos may have appointed 
"king of the Chaldeans,'' or of "Babylon,'' this son, 
whom he calls "Bel-sar-user my eldest son, the off- 
spring of my heart," asking the gods also "that his 
glory may endure," he meanwhile reserving to him- 
self the kingship of the countries outside of Chaldea 
and confederate with him; thus pursuing the same 
course which, according to Air. Pinches, Cyrus himself 
followed, who, "after having reigned nine years as 
king of Babylon and countries, abdicated the throne 
of Babylon in favor of his son Cambyses,and continued 
reigning some years as king of countries only" (R. P., 
vol. ii, 28-32 ; V, p. 147 ; xi, p. 89, note) . It is observable, 

too, that Daniel does not tell by whom Bel- Not known 

b y wli o m 
shazzar was slain, whether by Persian or slain. 

by Chaldean. That there must have been a second 
ruler, acting with kingly functions in Babylon during 
the long-continued absence of the first ruler, Naboni- 
dos, is most probable, and was indeed a necessity ; and 
judging from the monuments, none more capable or 



68 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

eligible or more trustworthy could have been found 
than this son; so that in Daniel thus entitling him, 
and bringing him thus into his story, there is no con- 
flict, but an additional item of historic information. 
Nor is there the slightest conflict or improbability in the 
theory that a conspiracy may have been formed in the 
palace itself, resulting from the great dissatisfaction of 
priesthood and nobles as stated by Cyrus himself, and 
that the second ''ruler of the kingdom,'' Belshazzar, 
under the ban of Daniel's interpretation, was slain in 
the palace in a sudden outbreak of his own chief officers 
and retainers, who then opened the wall gates and ad- 
mitted Gobryas and his forces to the fortifications and 
absolute control of the city. 

Neither does it seem exactly accurate to say that it 
was all "peace," even when Cyrus entered Babylon, 

Dissension if the inscriptions are rightly rendered ; ''for 
Sind restivG" 

ness under the soldiers of Gutium (Kurdish Medes) 
Cyrus in 

Babylon. carefully guarded the gates ; no special fes- 
tivity was observed, dissensions (mobs) before him 
had to be allayed, peace in the city did Cyrus establish ; 
peace to the province of Babylon did Gobryas pro- 
claim;" statements unnecessary, if peace had already 
existed from June to October (R. P. N. S., vol. v, p. 
i6o, etc.). It was doubtless, therefore, as hereinbefore 
suggested, as a peace offering that Nabonidos, who had 
been taken prisoner, was made governor of Karmania 
(R. P. N. S,, vol. i, p. i6i, note), to conciliate any 
who might against priests and nobles be disposed to 
revolt in his interest. For the offenses by reason of 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 69 

which he lost his crown were, it is said, committed 
against the gods, i. e., the hierarchy and higher classes ; 
so that for reasons which are suggested by certain tra- 
ditions connected with family ancestry there may have 
been a widespread discontent among the Chaldean 
masses at the turn which had been taken in the de- 
thronement of the native king, the establishment of 
a foreign rule, and the supremacy of alien and inferior 
races. For such^ in their estimation, were both Medes 
and Persians. 

As related to this, it is noted in Daniel that the 
mother of Belshazzar in her counsel to her son laid 
special stress upon the expression, **Nebu- The queen- 

11 1 r 1 »> 1 r 1 mother a 

chadnezzar, thy father, and was careful to daughter of 

•^ Nebuchad- 

repeat and emphasize that relationship. In nezzar. 
the absence of positive and definite information in the 
Biblical and cuneiform accounts as to whom Naboni- 
dos had married, we are necessarily left to the other 
sources referred to as to the actual relationship which 
would lead to and justify this careful persistence in 
designating her son as having this greatest of the 
Chaldean kings for his "father." From Herodotos we 
have the name of a queen joined with Nabonidos, bear- 
ing an Egyptian royal name, Nitocris, then in use, to 
whom are ascribed extensive works, defensive prepara- 
tions and improvements in Babylon, the credit of which 
from the monuments seem to belong to the king. As 
we are necessarily left to supplement the notes of the 
historian by conjecture, the suggestion of Canon Raw- 
h!nson may for the most part be accepted, that "she wa§ 



70 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, born of an Egyptian 
princess, married"^ to * . . Nabonidos, who ruled 
partly in her right, the mother of Belshazzar, the queen 
who came into the banqueting house and recommended 
him to send for Daniel" (Anc. Mon., iii, p. 66, note). 
There is no improbability in this idea, and that she was 
herself of this noble lineage, and greatly valued her- 
self and her son because of this illustrious ancestry. 
Not more than six or seven years had elapsed between 
the death of Nebuchadnezzar and the crowning of Na- 
bonidos (B. C. 561-555), who himself claims Assyrian 
or Babylonian kings as his "fathers" (i?. P. N, S., 
vol. V, pp. 171-177). In the seventh year of his reign 
(B. C. 548) his son Belshazzar was old enough to be 
with the army. Four years later "he was a wool 
merchant in Babylon" (B. C. 544, H. C. M., p. 535, 
note). "Belshazzar showed himself to the world to be 
a man of action. Outside of Babylon he was probably 
better known than Nabonidos himself" (p. 527). He 
must, therefore, when slain have been from thirty to 
forty years old, born, perhaps, in the peaceful times 
of the later years of Nebuchadnezzar f (B. C. 578-538). 

*'* Married successively to Neriglissar and Nabonidos," is Rawlinson's idea. 
But if taken at the death of Neriglissar by Nabonidos, B. C. 555, the son born to 
him thereafter could not have been over sixteen years old at the taking of Baby- 
lon. B, C. 538, nor over seven in 548, when he was with the army in north Baby- 
lonia; and yet Nabonidos claims him "as the offspring of my heart," his own son. 

t Indeed all the indications as to the time when the " Great King " had the last 
recorded dream (chapter iv) point to the later years of his reign. His great im- 
provements in Babylon had evidently been completed. He was apparently at 
peace with all nations, and his glory had culminated. If now Belshazzar was, say, 
forty years old when slain (538-40 — B. C, 578) he would have lived sixteen years 
during the reign of his grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar. He may, therefore, have 
been seven or eight years old when Daniel gave the interpretation. At that age he 
Qould have such knowledge as to have enabled him to truthfully say : *' I have 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 71 

At this ripe age, with the experience and reputation 
gained by years of service and a governorship of some 
years, his trading and intimate minghng with the 
soldiery and common people giving him acquaintance 
and influence among the masses, the defense of Baby- 
lon might well be left with this son, ''who is proved 
by the inscriptions to have been associated with the 
kingdom, and who was aided by the maturer counsels 
of the queen-mother;" not the mother of Nabonidos, 
who was dead, but of Belshazzar (Smith, Anc. Hist, 
of the East, p. 301 ; R, P,, vol. v, p. 147, 19-31). 

In the instance cited by Daniel the purpose of the 
queen in her use of the term ''father'' was to emphasize 
his relationship to the "Great King/' her father, as a 
precedent for calling the same skilled interpreter who 
had unraveled the mysterious visions of his grand- 
father. For neither here nor in the case where his 
father, Nabonidos, claims Assyrian or Babylonian 
kings as "his fathers" is the term to be construed 
strictly, but rather as "ancestors," more or less remote. 
This relationship, also, satisfactorily accounts for what 
otherwise seems altogether inexplicable, namely, the 
extraordinary honors after her death heaped upon her 
memory, in the elaborate funeral service conducted by 
no less a personage than Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, 

heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts " (v. 16). 
Thus Daniel may be fully justified in his responsive charge, that: "Thou, his 
[grand]son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knowest all 
this," to wit, the dream, the interpretation, the fulfillment or verification of the in- 
terpretation, the latter, perhaps, still fresh in his memory, as among the last of the 
memorable events or experiences of his illustrious ancestor, while in this second 
ruler's approach to manhood. 



72 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

in which the offerings were ten times such as were 
customary on such occasions, notwithstanding the 
humihating fact that she was the wife of a defeated and 
dethroned monarch. It also accounts for the universal 
mourning and lamentation in Accad and Sumer, once 
the subjects of her father, as also for the .service of a 
Semitic"^ priest in an Elamite robe ; and it removes all 
improbability from the statements of Daniel which in- 
dicate the high standing and veneration belonging to 
the queen-mother (//. C. M., pp. 502, 503). There was 
also great mourning and lamentation in the country of 
Accad, and by the king's son, i. e., Belshazzar, and his 
soldiers for three days, when on the fifth day of the 
month Nisan, in the ninth year of his reign, the mother 
of Nabonidos died in the camp fortress on the Eu- 
phrates above Sippara. For it was certainly through 
his mother that he was of royal race, as he himself thus 
testifies : ''I am Nabonidos, the Great King, . . . whom 

*** Elamite," and therefore Biblically Semitic. Even admitting that as early as 
the time of Abraham, the names of the kings of Elam philologically indicated a 
different ethnic origin, it does not follow that the aboriginal subjects were of the 
same race as their rulers. It is rather suggestive that even at so early an age as 
in the time of Cyrus, the invasion of a hardier race, or races, from the north had 
successfully established themselves and Aryan rule over the land, but without much 
change in their religion or other characteristics. Because Anglo-Saxon or Nor- 
man kings bore rule in Britain, we are not, therefore, warranted in concluding that 
the name Britain is either Saxon or French, or that the inhabitants thereof were 
of the same ethnic origin as their rulers. The aborigines of Ireland and America 
forbid ! It was, perhaps, because of this ethnic difference, and of the persistent 
efforts ot these Aiyan kings to come down from the high ground which they had 
conquered, and to subjugate the Semites in the much-coveted paradisaic lands be- 
tween and along the great rivers, that an almost perpetual warfare was kept up 
between the Semitic Assyrians, or Babylonians, and the Aryan kings of Elam. 
This racial antagonism may, perhaps, also account for the use of the ** Elamite 
robe," as distinguishing this priest of the Semitic Nebo from the Aryan Cambyses, 
who either himself, or by the instrumentality of another priest, was making un- 
usually large ** freewill offerings " to the same god. (H. C. and M., p. 503.) 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 73 

Sin and Nergal in the womb of my mother have des- 
tined to the destiny of sovereignty, the son of Nebo- 
balad-su-igbi, the wise prince, the worshipper of the 
great gods am I" (R. P. N. S.^ vol. v, pp. 160-168). It 
would therefore seem that Nabonidos was himself of 
a royal race, a descendant of Assurbanipal, the great- 
est king of the last successful dynasty, and that in right 
of his wife, Nitocris, daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, 
he came to the throne as an avenger of the wrong done 
in the murder of the legitimate ruler of the race of 
Nebuchadnezzar, and the usurpation of the throne by 
Neriglissar (Nergal-Sharezer). There were thus com- 
bined the fortunes and prestige of the most renowned 
of the kings of the two dynasties, with which were 
linked the proudest memories still leaving their impress 
upon the heart of the existent peoples, who manifested 
their attachment in the mourning, the lamentations, the 
honors paid first to the mother, and afterward still more 
lavishly to the wife* of the dethroned Nabonidos, in 
which an alien conqueror of an alien race was con- 
spicuously and heartily joining. 

* "Son " is a recently suggested reading. But of what king? Certainly not of 
Cyrus, nor of Belshazzar. Nor could it be Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidos, as 
the death of this person, the object of so much grief, whosoever it may have been, 
must have occurred in February, B. C. 537, since the mourning and funeral cere- 
monies lasted from 27th Adar (February) to 3d Nisan (March). If it could be 
proved that the funeral was that of Belshazzar, that would, of course, be a flat con- 
tradiction of Daniel, since in his story Belshazzar was slain as early as Tammuz 
(June), B. C. 538. But no such proof as 3'et has been found, and no good reason 
has been given, nor is it at all probable that a satisfactory account can ever be 
rendered, as to why such exceptionally distinguished obsequies should attend the 
funeral of the slain *' second*' or subordinate ** ruler" of the defunct Babylono* 
Chaldean kingdom. (Compare page 77). 



74 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 



IV* Identification of Darius the Median 

There remains now the identification of the person 
named "Darius the Median/' who figures in both 
Daniel and Josephus, as ruler with the first, and as 
conqueror of Babylon, or the kingdom of the Chal- 
deans, with the latter writer. Taking the data supplied 
by the inscriptions, the secular historians, the Biblical 
books, and Josephus, treating all with fairness and due 
respect, it is hoped that a satisfactory and conclusive 
result may be attained. 

It may be well to emphasize the singular agreement 
of the inscriptions with Daniel and Josephus in the 
Harmony ^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ the governorship, or absolute 
joFe^phnk ^ulii^g" authority, upon the capture of Baby- 
tfons"asTo lon was held or exercised, not by Cyrus, but 
orsMp^^^of by the leader of the army, by whom, in the 
absence of Cyrus, the city was taken; Cy- 
rus himself, according to the inscriptions, not being 
then present, nor for months afterward. These facts 
precisely accord with Daniel, but not with all the later 
secular writers, to some of whom this absence of 
Cyrus was apparently unknown. Herodotos agrees 
with the inscriptions, omitting, however, the name of 
the commander who took the city ; but Xenophon states 
that Cyrus was present, and that after giving the gen- 
eral orders he said : "Come, then, take your arms, and 
with the help of the gods I will lead you." Yet in the 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 75 

actual capture as described by Xenophon, Gobryas, not 
Cyrus, is the conspicuous figure (cf. Her., i, par. 191, 
with Cyrop., bk. vii, ch. 5, §§ IS-SS)."^ Such agree- 
ments tend to increase confidence in the story of 
Herodotos and of Daniel, and render it more unlikely 
that all the details given by the former as to the siege 
are altogether fictions. This absence of Cyrus from the 
capture and government of Babylon from June to Oc- 
tober or November well accounts for the fact which 
appears in Daniel that the issue of the proclamation for 
the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the first year of Cyrus 
and Darius was unknown to Daniel until revealed to 
him by the angel (ix, 23), the legitimate inference 
being that it was issued at the urgent request or in- 
stance of Jews who had been with him during the 
invasion, and had secured it during the interim between 
the capture and his entry into the city in Marchesvan ; 
another incidental indication that this book was written 
by Daniel in his own day, and not at a time when it 
would have taken its coloring from the current secular 
accounts. With Cyrus Daniel seems to have had little 



* Neither Herodotos nor the inscriptions give the time of the day when the 
attack and conquest took place. Xenophon, however, emphatically states that 
the attack had been timed for a day on which Cyrus had heard that '' there was a 
festival in Babylon, in which all the Babylonians drank and reveled the whole 
night.'' On that day, "as soon as it was dark," Cyrus opened the trenches, 
draining the river into the lake. The Persians under Gobr\'as then entered by 
the river bed, forced their way into the palace, met the king standing with his 
sword drawn, mastered him, killing also those with him. When the day came they 
that held the towers saw that the place was taken, the king dead, and therefore 
gave up the towers. All this accords with Daniel, who supplies the name omitted 
by Xenophon, Belshazzar, the king's son — the names of father and son being so 
coupled together in an inscription as to imply co-sovereignty (Rawlinson, Anc, 
Mon„ iii, p. 70, note, and 73, note). 



^ 



76 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

to do, his only reference to him in his book being 
(i, 2i) that ^'he continued'' (in his relation to the Chal- 
dean kingdom?) "even unto the first year of King 
Cyrus"* (and vi, 28), that ''he prospered in the reign 
of Darius and in the reign of Cyrus the Persian,"! 
and that in the third year of his reign he had "a 
vision" (x, i). This agreement with the inscriptions 
and with the best accredited secular historians may, 
therefore, be set to the credit of the Hebrew writers. 

It is necessary at the outset of this investigation to 
ascertain the exact relation of Darius the Median to 

Darius and Cyrus and the empire of the Medes and 
coiuemipo^ Persians, as that is indicated in Daniel. It 
raneous y. seems, for the most part, to have been over- 
looked, heretofore, that this relation is, indeed, very 
clearly indicated therein, and that Daniel does not claim 
that the Mede was either the predecessor or the suc- 
cessor of Cyrus. Yet many of the objections to the 
validity of this book of Daniel seem to depend for 
their validity upon the assumption that there must 
have existed one or the other of these relations. On 
the contrary, Darius is always represented as ''king 
Darius over ^^ ^^ Chaldeans," that is, of the realm of 

chaidea. ^j^^ Chaldeans, which "he had received, or 
taken," evidently from or in the name of a superior; 



*0r, more literally and consistently with the context (v. 19) and vi, 28: '' So 
(i. e., And such) was Daniel during the first year of King Cyrus." 

t That is, in other respects this Daniel also had prosperity during the reign of 
Darius and of Cyrus, but may not have had, subsequent to the first year, the same 
close relationship to Cyrus ; and in this qualified statement is also indicated the 
contemporaneousness of the two reigns of Cyrus and Darius (Gobryas), 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 77 

while Cyrus is designated as the Persian, or king of 
Persia : the general laws and customs under Cyrus over 

the Persiair"' 
which Darius acted, and by which he was empire. 

rigorously bound, being those of the general govern- 
ment of the Medes and Persians, and of which Cyrus 
was undoubtedly "the Great King/' Whatever law or 
decree Darius made was of uniform authority in every 
part of ''the kingdom of the Chaldeans" which he ad- 
ministered, but not beyond. For even the expression, 
"Then Darius wrote unto all people, nations, and lan- 
guages that dwell in all the earth [land]," must be 
understood, with the limitation "my kingdom," in the 
next clause, as meaning that part of the "earth," that 
IS, the land covered by his kingdom, "the kingdom of 
the Chaldeans," which he held contemporaneously with 
and under the suzerainty of "Cyrus the Persian" (vs. 
25-31 ; ix, i). That they were thus contemporaneous, 
the one the ruler of a kingdom or province forming 
part of the greater kingdom or empire over which the 
other reigned, is shown by the fact that the decree 
which in 2 Chron^pcxvi, 2%^ and Ezra i, is attributed to f 
the first year of Cyrus, is said in Daniel to have been 
issued in the first year of Darius, but by whom issued 
or by what authority is not stated in Daniel, so that 
there is no disagreement or contradiction or ambiguity 
in the several statements of the author of Chronicles, 
of Ezra, or of Daniel ix, i, 23, who, having begun his 
supplication "in the first year of Darius," is told by 
Gabriel that "at the beginning of thy supplications the 
commandment came forth," which could be no other 



78 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

than the proclamation ''of Cyrus in the first year of 
his reign," thus indisputably establishing the contempo- 
raneity of Cyrus the ''Great King'' the suzerain, and 
Darius, the king of the Chaldeans, a fact which, 
strangely enough, does not seem heretofore to have 
been generally recognized. This subordination of 
Darius and the consequent limitation of his authority 
also accounts for the absence of any application to him, 
Darius, by Daniel in furtherance of the objects contem- 
plated in his supplications, since a proclamation or 
decree by Darius would have been futile and ut- 
terly worthless, if not by its assumption to have been 
prejudicial. 

From the inscriptions we learn that the first governor 
of Babylonia under Cyrus was at the time of the cap- 
Gobryas ^^^^ ^^ ^'^^ ^^^^ governor of Kurdistan; 
laby loD^ and ^^^ from the fact that he is apparently 
limited to the kingdom of the Chaldeans, 
which did not at the time of the surrender of Naboni- 
dos include the Median province of Kurdistan, it would 
seem that he was transferred from that conquered 
province to the governorship of the realm wrested from 
that Chaldean king and his son and co-rex Belshazzar. 

Taking now the data found in Daniel, our attention 
is at once directed to the statement of the age of 
Darius not I^^^his the Median at the transfer of Baby- 
Astyages. j^^^ ^^ ^j^^ Medo-Perslan dominion as sixty- 
two years, that is, that he was in his sixty-third year. 
As the capture by Gobryas was in B. C. 538, the birth 
of this Darius must have been B. C. 600, or ten years 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 79 

later than the treaty between Cyaxares (Ahasuerus) 
I and Alyattes of Lydia, at which time Astyages 
(Istuvegu), the son of the Median king Cyaxares I 
(Hebrew Ahasuerus), was either married or espoused 
to the daughter of the Lydian king, and may be as- 
sumed to have been about twenty years old, born, say, 
B. C. 630. Taking as the date of his defeat and de- 
thronement B. C. 558, and the years of his reign as 
usually given, thirty-five, and we have as the date of 
his accession to the throne, and the probable date of his 
father's death, B. C. 593. At the time of his dethrone- 
ment he would, therefore, be seventy-two years old, and 
if living at the fall of Babylon would be ninety-two 
years old, an age which would itself be against all 
probability of his occupying the responsible position 
named, and altogether inconsistent with Daniel's ac- 
count. The theory which sees in Astyages Darius the 
Median may, therefore, be dismissed as failing to meet 
the required and necessary conditions. 

As appears clearly from the cuneiform inscriptions, 
the city was taken by Gobryas of Kurdistan, and he 

also was immediately made its ofovernor: Gobryas 

rules Glial- 
''he took the kingdom." This authority at dea. 

first seems to have been limited to the city, perhaps on 
account of the territory outside being occupied by the 
forces under the personal command of Cyrus himself; 
but after the entry of Cyrus, Marchesvan 3, he seems 
to have received an extension of his authority, cover- 
ing the entire province of Babylonia, or the kingdom of 
Chaldea. So from Dan. v, 31; vi, 25, 26; ix, i, we 



80 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Darius the ^^^^^ that ''Darius the Median took the 
the'^cha!- kingdom of the Chaldeans," was made or 

^^^^' appointed king. That the province was 

under the direction and control of Gobryas as governor 
is clearly stated in the inscriptions. ''On the i6th day 
of Tammuz (June) Gobryas, the governor of the 
country of Kurdistan (Gutium) [Kurdish tribes, or, as 
before shown, Kurdish Medes] and the soldiers of 
Cyrus entered Babylon without fighting. . . . The 
third day of the month Marchesvan Cyrus entered 
Babylon. . . . Peace to all the province of Babylon 
did Gobryas, his governor, proclaim. Governors in 
Babylon he appointed. From the month Chisleu to 
the month Adar (November, 538, to February, 537) 
the gods of the country of Accad, whom Nabonidos 
had transferred to Babylon, returned to their own 
cities. The eleventh day of [the subsequent] Mar- 
chesvan (October, 537) during the night Gobryas was 
on the bank of the river. . . . The wife* of the king 
[Nabonidos, the mother of Belshazzar] died. From 
the twenty-seventh of Adar (February) to the third 
day of Nisan (March or April?) there was lamenta- 
tion in the country of Accad'' (pp. 502, 503), "mourn- 
ing for the mother of Belshazzar." 

Thus it appears that for the greater part of a year, 

* Read recently *' son " by some. But the reading '* wife *' accords better with 
the context, and avoids an unnecessary " clash " with the clear statement of 
Daniel, as to the death of the ** son.'' She was living the day of the night when 
her son was slain, and this is the only record of the death of this queenly and dis- 
tinguished woman. The funeral ceremonies were in B. C. 537, continuing from 
February 27 to March 3d. (See Chron. Consp.^ note f. See also note to page 70, 
Ball renders it " king's consort," Light from the East^ p. 221.) 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 81 

at least, if not into the second year, Gobryas was act- 
ing governor of the kingdom of Chaldea, Gobryas in 

-- . - - .-themonu- 

and there is no record or reference in the ments. Da- 
rius in Dan* 
book of Daniel to Darius the Median beyond iei, ruled the 

•^ ye ar after 

what is termed the first year of his reign, the capture. 
The fact that in the cuneiform inscriptions he is 
not called king, as Darius the Median is called, 
involves no contradiction or difficulty. For the govern- 
ors of Babylon appointed under the domination of As- 
syria, though not kings, are included among the 
kings of Babylon in Ptolemy's Canon, and Gobryas, as 
well as they, exercised all the authority of kings over 
the territory ruled by them severally. Such was the 
authority to appoint ^'governors in Babylon," which the 
inscriptions say he did appoint, the number according 
to Daniel being one hundred and twenty. This number 
sufficiently differentiates this transaction from the sub- 
sequent appointment of twenty satraps, and the division 
of the entire empire into satrapies under and by 
Darius son of Hystaspes. Neither is there any im- 
probability in the statement that Daniel was by Darius 
appointed the first of the three presidents, when the 
history of this peerless Israelite became known to him, 
as it certainly would be, nor that Daniel should retain 
his reputation and influence during the subsequent 
years of the reign of Cyrus the Achaemenian. Neither 
would the fact that in the inscriptions the name given 
is (Ugbaru) Gobryas, and in Daniel and Josephus is 
Darius, be an insuperable obstacle to the identification, 
as below may be made more fully to appear, if other 



82 Danielf Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

matters indicate that these names designate one and 
the same person, since an objection arising from this 
diversity has been anticipated by Josephus in the state- 
ment that Darius had another name among the Greeks. 
Besides this, it is by no means certain that Darius is a 
proper name, or is other than a title of royalty or 
nobility, preceding another and distinguishing name, 
as in the only instances of its use, namely, Darius the 
Median, Darius Hystaspes, Darius Ochus, Darius 
Nothus, and Darius Codomannus. 

That Gobryas was a Mede, as was Darius, seems ap- 
parent from the fact that he first appears as governor 
of Gutium, or Kurdistan, in which were included the 
Madai, or Medes, ''who, in fact," writes Professor 
Sayce, "were the Kurdish tribes who lived eastward of 
Assyria, and whose territories for the most part ex- 
tended as far as the Caspian Sea, and whose outposts 
extended westward to the Halys." Nor is there the 
least improbability in the statement that one of these 
people should be at the head of this victorious army, 
when it is true that the same nation was so conspicuous 
in forming the kingdom which superseded the latest 
Babylono-Semitic empire as to have given to the new 
dominion in all secular history at its beginning the 
double description, "Medo-Persian," a form unusual 
and unique. No other name, indeed, seems to have been 
known for it in its earliest history than that which 
united these two names either in that form or "Medes 
and Persians ;" and we may emphasize the strangeness 
of the allegation that both Biblical writers and secular 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 83 

historians, the former living at or near the time, and 
^ some of the latter not many years after, should have 
substituted for ^^Manda," or "people of the Manda," 
the name ''Medes" or "Mede ;'' and the improbability 
that such a substitution should be so made at this early 
date, and that the mistake should be perpetuated with- 
out a single protest from any source, or attempt at 
correction until the present day. It is, further, some- 
what singular that the people termed "Manda" do not 
seem to have had any positively fixed territorial limits 
or possessions, but were emphatically ''widespread ;" 
the term ''Manda" being seemingly applied as were 
and are the words "barbarians" and "Gentiles," or 
"heathen'' or "nomads," and for the same reason, as 
being descriptive or referring to some marked char- 
acteristic common to many peoples that in other 
respects were distinct and separate. The single ap- 
parent exception in the case of the Ekbatanites simply 
illustrates and confirms this explanation as being the 
beginning of that settlement of the roving tribes or 
clans which ultimately consolidated, most of them 
under the control of a central government. Thus the 
"Medes" were doubtless in their earlier years classed 
by the more cultured Semites with the "Manda," but 
it seems certain that all "Manda" were not "Medes." 
We have seen that Darius, and for the same reason 
Gobryas, cannot be indentified with Astyages, and must 
therefore be sought elsewhere. In Xenophon, Astyages 
IS said to have had a son who was named Cyaxares II, 
Josephus also writes: "When Babylon was taken by 



84 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Darius, and when he with his kinsman Cyrus had put 
an end to the dominion of the Babylonians, he was 
sixty-two years old. He was the son of Astyages, and 
had another name among the Greeks" (Ant,, bk. '^S 
ch. xi, 4). Herodotos, on the other hand, a writer 
said to be contemporary with the daughter of Cyrus, 
expressly declares that Astyages "had no male issue" 
(i, 109, p. 49). 

The data recorded in Daniel and in Josephus would 
make Darius seven years old when the death of 
Cyaxares I occurred, and it seems sufficiently attested 
by a comparison and combination of the statements of 
Daniel, Josephus and Xenophon that such a person as 
Cyaxares II did exist, and that he was not the son 
but a younger brother of Astyages, the son of Cyaxares 
I, and as such by Oriental custom the rightful heir to 
the throne of Media, and that this heirship, belonging 
preferably to the king's brother in the east, led, per- 
haps, to the idea that he was son of Astyages, as the 
western custom would give this right to the son, and 
not to the brother. 

Coincidently, Daniel's Darius the Mede is the son 
of Ahasuerus (Cyaxares) (ix, i).* That this name 

*In the version of the Septuagint called "the real Septuagint Text," this 
verse reads thus : " Darius, the son of Xerxes, of the race of the Medes.' In this 
substitution of Xerxes for Ahasuerus, the translators could not have referred to 
the Xerxes whose queen was Esther, since he was not of the *' race " of the Medes, 
but was the son of Darius Hystaspes, a Persian. Neither could the Ahasuerus 
of Esther have been the Ahasuerus of Tobit, since that Ahasuerus (Cyaxares I) 
was at no time ruler of a kingdom that reached from India to Ethiopia, as was 
Xerxes' (Esther i, 1). The translators in this version of Daniel must have in- 
tended by "Darius the son of Xerxes" the same person as " Darius the son of 
Ahasuerus," as in the more exact version of Theodotion. 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 85 

is the equivalent of the Greek Cyaxares Ahasuerus 
appears clearly from its appHcation in Tobit cyaxares/^^ 
xiv, 13, where it is recorded that before 
Tobit died ''he heard of the destruction of Nineveh, 
which had been taken by Nebuchadnezzar and Ahas- 
uerus." Thus used in connection with the destruction 
of Nineveh by the united forces of the Medes under 
Cyaxares I and the Babylonians under Nabopolassar 
and his son Nebuchadnezzar, there can be no question 
as to its being another or Hebrew transliteration of the 
name of the Median king, by the Greeks transliterated 
as Cyaxares. 

By almost universal consent Ahasuerus, the king 
whose consort was Esther, is identified with Xerxes 
the Persian, whose invasion of Greece was Ahasuerus 
so conspicuous a failure. The same name th^^^Aha^u- 
occurs m Ezra iv, 0, and it remains to 
identify the historic king so designated by Ezra. The 
passage reads thus: ''Then the people of the land 
. . . hired counselors against them [the Israelites] , to 
frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of 
Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. 
And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of 
his reign, wrote they unto him an accusation against 
the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem." Possibly in 
the beginning of the reign of both Cyrus and Ahas- 
uerus the complaints came to the latter, with the hope 
of a more successful issue through his mediation than 
they could expect through a direct application to his 
imperial suzerain, who had, perhaps, as above sug- 



86 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

gested, even then committed himself by his early 
proclamation as Cyrus king of Persia. 

With the fall of Babylon began the reign of Cyrus 
and the governorship of Gobryas (Ugbaru) over 
Babylonia, to which the province of Syria, including 
Judea, appertained. In truth, it seems that for a time 
the entirety of the territory wrested from Nabonidos, 
by which the independent Babylono-Chaldean dominion 
was extinguished, continued to be administered by the 
subordinate king or governor of Babylonia, or the 
Chaldeans. This change of masters of Judea from the 
Babylono-Chaldean empire to that of the subordinate 
king or governor of the Chaldeans resident in Baby- 
Ion, at that time the capital city of the Medo-Persian 
empire, was doubtless seized as a favorable opportunity 
to crush the incipient effort for the rehabilitation of the 
Jewish kingdom. From this beginning the opposition 
continued until the reign of Darius son of Hystaspes 
king of Persia, after whose advent the primacy of the 
Medes seems to have disappeared. In Esther, under 
the reign of his son and successor Xerxes, Persia is 
named first or named alone, except once only in the 
closing verses of the book ; this exception being due, 
perhaps, to the greater familiarity of the Jewish writer 
with the form found in the earlier prophets and Daniel. 
But in Ezra and Nehemiah this combination, Medo- 
Persian, or Medes and Persians, is not found; these 
being testimonies, incidental, it is true, but, therefore, 
all the more forcible, in support of Daniel as being in 
accord with the earlier prophets of Judah, who could 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 87 

not have derived their phraseology from the Macca- 
bean Age. 

Accepting as substantially accurate the authorities 
most relied upon for the rulers from the taking of 
Babylon (538) to the accession of Darius succession 

r -r-r / x i 1 • ^^ TUleiS In 

son of Hystaspes ( S^i ), we have, according Ptoiemy, Ez- 

•^ F V J / > y , ^ ra, and Dan- 

to Ezra, successively, Cyrus, the Median i^i. 
name Ahasuerus (Greek, Cyaxares II), and Artaxerx- 
es. In Daniel we have for the same, or part of the same, 
period but two names, Darius the Median and Cyrus. 
In the list of Ptolemy we have but one king between 
Cyrus and the Hystaspean Darius, namely, Cambyses, 
the son of Cyrus, in agreement with the inscriptions. 
As stated, the opposition of the Samaritans to the 
work attempted at Jerusalem continued from the be- 
ginning of the reign of Cyrus to the second year of 
Darius Hystaspes, king of Persia (Ezra iv, 5, et seq.^ 
24). It is also certain that (v, 6, etc.) the Ahasuerus 
and the Artaxerxes named are placed by Ezra, and in 
this order, between the reigns of Cyrus and Darius. 
It is also to be carefully noted as a suggestive fact that 
Ahasuerus is not by Ezra styled ''king of Persia," 
this kingship of Persia being applied in this chapter 
only to Cyrus, and to this Artaxerxes, to Darius, and 
to the Artaxerxes mentioned in chapter vi, verse 14. 
If, therefore, we follow Ezra in his order of succession, 
we are absolutely precluded from confounding this 
first-named Artaxerxes, who in this order is made to 
precede Darius, with the Artaxerxes of chapter vi, 
verse 14, who in this order is placed after Darius 



88 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Hystaspes, and was doubtless his grandson, surnamed 
Longimanus. Up to the close of the third chapter 
Ezra had given the story of the return of *'the children 
of the captivity" from the first year of Cyrus to the 
completion of the temple and its dedication in the 
second year of Darius Hystaspes (chapter iii), reserv- 
ing for this fourth chapter the details of the oppo- 
sition which was encountered during this period 
(cf. V. 24; Hag. ii, i, etc.)- How accurately these 
statements of Ezra accord with Ptolemy, the secu- 
lar authority most relied upon, may now be made to 
appear. 

In Ptolemy's list the succession of kings of Baby- 
lon, the then capital of the Medo-Persian kingdom, is 
Ezra and as follows: Cyrus (538-529); Cambyses, 
agree. his son (529-521) ; Darius Hystaspes (521- 

485) ; Xerxes^ his son (485-465) ; Artaxerxes Longi- 
manus, his son (465-425). It will be observed that 
the name of Smerdes (i. e., Bardes, Gomates, Tany- 
oxares, Oropastes, as he is variously named) is not in- 
serted in this list, his usurpation having occurred dur- 
ing the later years of Cambyses, and continued but a 
few months after the death of that king ; when he was 
slain at the instance of conspirators, who at once pro- 
claimed Darius, son of Hystaspes, one of their number, 
king of Persia^ who was thus accounted as the immedi- 
ate successor of Cambyses ; the brief interval occupied 
by Smerdes being included in the time allotted to Cam- 
byses and this Darius. Neither does the name of Ahas- 
uerus nor of Darius the Median appear in this list, 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 89 

and this omission can only be justified on the ground 
that neither name is set forth by either Ezra or Daniel 
as being king of the Medo-Persian kingdom. If, 
however, as is herein contended, each name is taken as 
indicating one and the same person, that person is dis- 
tinctly designated by his Median name Ahasuerus, 
and title Darius, as a Median, and as "king of the 
Chaldeans," or "of Babylon." As such, his first year's 
reign is clearly shown in Daniel to be contemporary 
with the first year of Cyrus, he being certainly simply 
ruler of the designated part of the empire, and de- 
pendent upon and subordinate to Cyrus, who was king 
of the whole realm ; his relation to Cyrus being some- 
what similar to that of Herod the Great, as king of 
Judea, to Augustus, the Imperator of the entire Roman 
world, of which the kingdom of Judea formed but a 
small part. 

It will be seen that there is but one king whose name 
appears in Ptolemy's list as reigning over Persia after 
Cyrus and before Darius Hystaspes, namely, cambyses 
Cambyses, the son of Cyrus. Coincidently, Artaxerxe^s 
there is named by Ezra as reigning in the 
same interim but one person styled king of Persia, 
therefore having the same jurisdiction or dominion as 
his predecessor Cyrus and his successor Darius, 
namely, "Artaxerxes king of Persia" (iv, 7). To this 
king, expressly stated to be "Artaxerxes king of 
Persia," accusation was made by letter, and in reply 
the complainants were commanded to cause the work 
at Jerusalem '*to cease, and that the city be not build- 



90 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

ed." Accordingly, the work ceased "unto the second 
year of the reign of Darius king of Persia." (See 
the entire correspondence, iv, 7-24.) This record, and 
the coincidence which it marks, seems sufficient to war- 
rant the conclusion that this Artaxerxes in Ezra and 
Cambyses of Ptolemy and of the secular historians are 
but different names for one and the same person — the 
only legitimate king of Persia intermediate between 
Cyrus and Darius son of Hystaspes, viz., Cambyses 
son of Cyrus. Such a decree accords well with the 
character of this arbitrary, impulsive, cruel, iconoclas- 
tic temple-destroying king, and is wholly inconsistent 
with what is known of the Artaxerxes who reigned 
later than his father Xerxes, and his grandfather 
Darius Hystaspes. If further confirmation of this 
identity is required it may be found in the fact that 
Josephus attributes to Cambyses what in the remainder 
of this fourth chapter of Ezra follows this sixth 
verse, and which is by Ezra attributed to Artaxerxes 
king of Persia (Ant,, bk. xi, ch. ii). That no relief 
was afforded the Samaritan complainants until after 
the accession of Darius accords well with the accounts 
given of this period in the secular histories. The 
decree was doubtless issued by Cambyses when busied 
with the preparations for his Egyptian expedition, from 
which he did not get farther on his way back than Da- 
mascus, where he died. His absence, and the constant 
demands of his hazardous enterprise, put him practi- 
cally out of the reach of counter influences ; and at- 
home the authorities left in charge were sufficiently 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 91 

occupied with the effort to maintain the integrity of the 
empire in the face of disturbances, attempted revolts, 
and at last a usurpation of the throne itself. They 
were not, therefore, likely to be in the mood to meddle 
with the affairs of this outlying province of Syria. It 
is not known that Cambyses is elsewhere addressed as 
Artaxerxes, but this need not stand in the way of this 
identification, since, as we have seen, names were some- 
what laxly used, and certain apparently throne names, 
among them Darius and Artaxerxes, were evidently 
frequently assumed by claimants to the throne. ^'It 
has been abundantly evinced that Artaxerxes is a regal 
name, and was assumed by all who were certainly 
known to have borne it in addition to their private and 
personal designation on their accession to the regal 
power." So Bessus, after the murder of Darius Codo- 
mannus, ''assumed the upright tiara and royal robe and 
the name Artaxerxes instead of Bessus, proclaiming 
himself 'king of Asia' " (Encyclo, Brit,, vol. ii, pp. 
641, 642). 

With this identification of this Artaxerxes as Cam- 
byses sufficiently established, as in every way most 
probable, and this probability confirmed by Josephus, 
this part of the difficulty in Ezra wholly disappears, 
but there still remains that which the introduction of 
the name Ahasuerus in this text creates. 

The purpose to be subserved by the removal of this 
difficulty may justify or excuse somewhat of repeti- 
tion. xAlS this Ahasuerus precedes Artaxerxes in 
Ezra, and this Artaxerxes fills up the interim between 



92 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Cyrus and Darius son of Hystaspes, it follows that 
this Ahasuerus must have been a contemporary of 
Cyrus. As we have suggested, he cannot therefore 
have been the Ahasuerus of Esther, if that Ahas- 
uerus was Xerxes, since Xerxes was the son and 
successor of Darius Hystaspes. It was in the begin- 
ning of the reign of this Ahasuerus, according to 
Ezra, that complaint was made of the Jews, but ap- 
parently after the proclamation of Cyrus had gone 
forth, with the hope, doubtless, that through his medi- 
ation and influence with Cyrus the purpose of the Jews 
might yet be frustrated. But according to Ezra, Jo- 
sephus and Daniel, their efforts were, during the days 
of Cyrus, in vain, and the work went steadily on to- 
ward its completion. According to Daniel the first 
year of Cyrus was the first year of Darius the Median, 
of whom Cyrus is reported to be a kinsman, a statement 
fully in accord with the Greek writers. It would seem 
also that Darius the Median and Ahasuerus were 
either contemporaries or two names used, the one by 
Ezra, the other by Daniel, for one and the same person. 
In Ezra it is written that Ahasuerus, whose Median 
name indicates his Median origin, reigned, but over 
what or whom is not indicated. In Daniel the Mede 
is introduced without any pretense of possessing 
independent authority, but clearly exercising his 
power as an appointee, contemporaneous with the 
higher authority to whom he was subordinate, and 
by whom, as is represented, he seems to have been 
honored, as well with the title as with the functions of 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 93 

a king; but apparently limited to the kingdom of the 
Chaldeans, with Cyrus the king of the Medes and 
Persians, his kinsman, as suzerain. That neither of 
these names appears in Ptolemy's list is in accord with 
the method pursued in constructing the Canon. In 
conformity with this general course or method, as, for 
example, in the case of the viceroys appointed by the 
i\ssyrian kings, the name of no viceroy or governor ap- 
pears when the suzerain "Great King's" name is found ; 
and yet such governor in all probability exercised his 
proper functions. Thus the entry of the name of Cyrus 
at the same date (538) absolutely excluded the name 
of the subordinate or viceroy. 

Reverting now to the identification of the name 
Cyaxares I with the Hebrew Ahasuerus, as found in 
Tobit xiv, 15, it is suggestive to find that a second 
Cyaxares (Heb., Ahasuerus) of the Median regal 
race is named in the Greek books treating of this his- 
toric period, who is said to have been intimately con- 
nected with Cyrus. As before stated, he is said by 
Xenophon to be a son of Astyages, the last Median 
monarch. Accepting, however, the authority of Herod- 
otos in the assertion that Astyages had no son, it fol- 
lows that Xenophon is in error in calling Cyaxares II 
the son of Astyages. And this accords with and is 
corrected by Daniel. For if Darius the Median is the 
same as the person named by Xenophon, Cyaxares, and 
Daniel is right, then he was not the son, but the 
brother, of Astyages (Istuvegu) the son of (Ahasu- 
erus) Cyaxares I; and whether his real name was or 



94 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

was not Cyaxares (Ahasuerus) his father bore that 
name and was a Mede. As before stated, the brother 
would be, in the Orient, the preferred and rightful 
heir to the throne of the deposed king. But Astyages 
was never king of Babylon, nor of the kingdom of the 
Chaldeans. He was king of the Medes, and of what- 
ever the Medes had under their sway, and, therefore, 
his brother, the son of Cyaxares I (Ahasuerus I), 
could only be heir apparent to the kingdom of the 
Medes, or of the heterogeneous masses ''of the people," 
"the widespread people of the Manda." A son of 
Cyaxares I would be "of the seed of the Medes." 
Doubtless, Xenophon had drawn upon his imagination 
for many of his incidents and descriptions, but under- 
lying or beside his story there is, in all likelihood, a 
stratum of fact, of which the statement of both Daniel 
and Josephus as to at least this matter afifords confir- 
mation, and to it lends a credence of which it would 
otherwise perhaps be unworthy, namely, that after the 
defeat and dethronement of Astyages there still re- 
mained another member of the royal house of Media ; 
that he and Cyrus were kinsmen, and that for a time he 
was in great favor with his illustrious kinsman. We 
may hereinafter suggest reason for his further repre- 
sentation, that after a time his principal residence was 
the northern Ekbatana, the original Median capital, 
where he bore himself with regal magnificence. Nor 
would the permission of such rule be out of harmony 
with the course which was pursued by Cyrus in the 
case of Nabonidos and of Croesus of Lydia, but would 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 95 

warrant the expectation that this son of the fallen 
house to which he himself was closely related would 
receive special favor and consideration. As Nabonidos 
was intrusted with the governorship of Karmania, and 
Astyages is reported to have been treated with great 
kindness, there is not the least improbability in the 
inference that the younger brother of the dethroned 
king, especially if a man of character and ability and 
known to be loyal to the ^^Great King," should have 
had, prior to the taking of Babylon, the governorship 
or viceroyalty of Kurdistan, territory a large part of 
which had been dominated by the kings of the Medes, 
and in which as Kurdish tribes or clans the Medes had 
pursued the life of "Manda,'' roving, nomadic lives. As 
a prince of the royal house of Media, he may have been 
known to the people by the appellative "Darius," a 
name or title that seems to have belonged only to 
royalty among the Medes and their kindred the 
Persians. 

So, therefore, he appears in Daniel without other 
personal name, his relationship and house, however, 
being distinctively defined by the unequivocal claim 
that he was a Mede^ '^Darius the son of Ahasuerus," 
who could be no other than the Cyaxares I (Ahas- 
uerus I) of the Ninevite conquest. If it seemed wise 
to conciliate the friends of Nabonidos, by conferring 
upon him the control of Karmania, it would seem a still 
greater manifestation of political wisdom to conciliate 
the people who had been the subjects of the great 
empire of Media, by securing the support of its royal 



96 Daniel, Darius the Median, and CyruS 

house, especially so if its surviving representative was 
a man of character and action ; as was also wisely con- 
ciliatory, the condescending union of the two names, 
the Mede first, in the title of the new government, the 
Medo-Persian, as lessening the sense of humiliation. 

To afterward intrust to the Median prince the con- 
trol of that vast empire which had marshaled under its 
banners "the widespread people of the Manda," the 
heterogeneous multitudes of the farther north, but ever 
pressing their way to the south lands, was at once a 
bold assertion of the belief of Cyrus in the invulnerable- 
ness of the empire and of confidence in the Medes. The 
assignment was indeed befitting in their kinsman ; and, 
as conceding coequalization, could not be otherwise 
than gratifying to them. For they were the peers of 
their Persian conquerors, of the same ethnic race, their 
equals in bravery, vastly outnumbering "his little 
army," lacking only at the time of their overthrow unity 
and a leader of consummate skill, to whom they could 
be devoted, such as was afterward found in Gobryas 
(Darius), now loyally in the service of his suzerain 
the "Great King" in his militant march from the inhos- 
pitable clime of their northern capital, Ekbatana, to 
the sunlit palaces of Babylon and Shushan, or 
Susa. Neither is it at all improbable that, Baby- 
lon now thoroughly organized and in complete sub- 
jection and submissive to Cyrus, he should be re- 
manded to his former governorship, where his services 
would be more greatly needed, and where, in a wider 
field, he could maintain the same orderly obedience 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 97 

to the new imperium that had obtained under his wise 
administration in Babylonia among the Chaldeans. 

We may now emphasize the fact that in Ezra the 
reign of Ahasuerus precedes that of Artaxerxes king 
of Persia, who is also the predecessor of Darius Hys- 
taspes, and thus comes between Cyrus and this Darius. 
As there is listed by Ptolemy but one king of Persia, 
Cambyses by name, as reigning during that interim 
over the Persian empire, the identity of the person 
named by Ezra Artaxerxes, and by Ptolemy and 
Josephus Cambyses, seems to be indisputably con- 
firmed, that being simply his throne name; so that, 
having, like Bessus, assumed it, his proper address 
would be Artaxerxes Cambyses, as is exemplified in the 
case of Artaxerxes Longimanus ; the only historically 
possible but most improbable and inconsequential al- 
ternative being that of the usurper Smerdes, among 
whose numerous appellatives this one is nowhere found 
recorded. 

It is therefore very significant, and in exact accord- 
ance with the secular histories and inscriptions, that 
the Ahasuerus who preceded Artaxerxes is not said to 
have reigned over the Medo-Persian or Persian em- 
pire, since he could not have so reigned, the time and 
territory having been preoccupied by Cyrus. Yet if 
he preceded Artaxerxes he must have reigned con- 
temporaneously wuth Cyrus. From this it follow^s that 
his reign was in subordination to Cyrus, and the rela- 
tion of Cyrus to him must have been that of suzerainty 
over a part of the empire not specifically named. But 



98 Daoiel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

the connecting of his name with the complaints of the 
Jewish enemies sufficiently indicates his kingdom, since 
after the fall of Nineveh to Babylon alone could they 
look for help, or for redress of their grievances. His 
reign was therefore over Babylon, or the kingdom of 
the Chaldeans. 

But for this same period, and under this same ''Great 
King" as suzerain, according to Daniel, Darius the 
Median was king in Babylon of the kingdom of the 
Chaldeans. Darius and this Ahasuerus (Greek, Cyax- 
ares) must therefore be one and the same person. 

In the inscriptions a third name appears of a person 
exercising the functions of government in subordina- 
tion to the same ''Great King'' as suzerain, whose rule 
began at the same time and covers identically the same 
period as that distinctly named by Daniel, and inferen- 
tially determined in Ezra, namely, Gobryas (Ugbaru), 
of Gutium, or Kurdistan, the commander of the army 
which entered Babylon in triumph. 

As to each of these is attributed the same rule over 
the same territory, under the same suzerain, beginning 
at the same time, and, so far as can be determined, for 
the same period, it seems indisputably to follow that 
the several names belong to one and the same person. 

In this Gobryas, of Kurdistan, the commander of the 

army which entered and took possession of Babylon 

T^^r. «-,•♦,. in the absence of Cyrus, there seem, there- 

Identity J ' ' 

ancf DarTus ^^^^> ^^ ^^^^ ^^e conditions required to 
shown. identify Darius the Median as the second 

(Greek) Cyaxares (Hebrew, Ahasuerus), the son of 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 99 

the first (Greek) Cyaxares, (Hebrew, Ahasuerus), 
named by Daniel and Ezra. 

( 1 ) The age of Darius favors this identity. As we 
have seen, his birth occurred B. C. 600-599, some six 
or seven years before the death of his father gy ^^^ ^^^ 
Cyaxares I, or Ahasuerus, and if reared in ^^^®^' 
the royal palace or household of Astyages he might 
readily have passed for and been popularly supposed to 
be his son, and there is thus readily seen how the differ- 
ent reports could have currency, while the better in- 
formed knew that to Astyages no son had been born. 
In that case, too, the intimacy and confidence said mutu- 
ally to exist between the person in Xenophon named 
Cyaxares and Cyrus are accounted for; since they 
may have grown up together, and formed their at- 
tachment in their early manhood, when Cyrus was held 
at the court of Astyages in some sort as a hostage for 
the loyalty of Persia, an attachment such as that of 
David and Jonathan in the household of Saul. At the 
fall of Astyages he would be in his forty-second year, 
some two years older than Cyrus, and this also renders 
credible the report that the ''Great King" had afterward 
married a daughter of this son of Cyaxares I, the legiti- 
mate heir to the Median crown, and thus strengthened 
his hold upon his Median subjects, and justified still 
more fully the title of his imperium as the Medo- 
Persian empire. 

(2) Both the inscriptions and Daniel harmonize in 
the matter of the absence of Cyrus when the city of 
Babylon was taken, with which Herodotos also coin- 

LofC. 



100 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Absence of cides''' (i, iQi). Thus, the inscriptions State 
Cyrus when \ ^ / r 

Babylon fell, that Gobryas entered and took possession of 
the city; Daniel does not name Cyrus, nor state in so 
many words who first entered the city ; but, 

(3) The inscriptions state that Gobryas immediately 

assumed the functions of the government of the city, 

His imme- and that after the arrival of Cyrus some 

diate govern- 
orship, four months later his authority was extend- 
ed to include the province — substantially the Chaldean 
kingdom, which had been taken from Nabonidos. 
Daniel states that Darius the Median ''took," or re- 
ceived, "the kingdom of the Chaldeans," an exact state- 
ment of the fact as revealed in the inscriptions of Cy- 
rus, differing substantially only in the name and title 
of the governor. In each record the extent of the 
dominion covered is the kingdom of the Chaldeans 
covering the territory of Babylonia, perhaps Syria and 
some smaller adjoining districts, but not the entire 
empire of Cyrus. It must be distinctly kept in mind 
that as to what was governed the only difference seems 
to be in the words used to convey the same idea, the 
manner of describing the same boundaries. Thus in 
the inscription the rendering is, "All the province of 
Babylon" (502) ; in Daniel it is "the kingdom" or 
"realm of the Chaldeans," a difference in form, but 
suggesting the same extent of dominion, the same 

*Herodotos states that Cyrus stationed the bulk of his army near where the river 
enters the city, another division beyond (south) of the city, and, with the inefficient 
part of the army, himself marched northward to the lake, and there, by means of a 
canal or trenches, diverted the water sufficiently from its natural channel to make 
a passage for the forces under Gobryas into the heart of the city. (See also 
pp. 46 and 82 below.) 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 101 

territorial limits. For when the kingdom of Nabonidos 
was wrested from him this was about what he had to 
surrender. In this item both records must apparently 
refer to one and the same person, for there could not be 
two persons exercising the same powers and perform- 
ing the same executive functions in the same city and 
conterminous territory in subordination to the same 
supreme authority, in the one case named, and in the 
other certainly implied. 

(4) In the inscriptions it is distinctly stated that 
^'peace to the city did Cyrus establish, peace to all the 
province of Babylon did Gobryas his ^j^^ ^^^^^ 
governor proclaim. Governors in Babylon and^form of 
he appointed." So in Daniel it is said that g^^^^^^^*- 
^'Darius the Median set over the kingdom" (i. e., of the 
Chaldeans) *'one hundred and twenty princes, which 
should be over the whole kingdom. And over these 
three presidents ; that the princes might give accounts 
unto them, and the king should have no damage" 
(vi, I, 2). Taking into account the somewhat limited 
jurisdiction claimed by Darius, these officers must have 
been court guardians, heads of departments of finance, 
collectors and assessors of the revenues, military at- 
taches of the king, etc., etc. Most of them seem to 
have been within easy call, and readily collected in 
Babylon, for consultation, and for devising schemes, 
professedly for the advantage of the king, but really 
to minister to their petty jealousy, and to serve their 
own paltry *^ends." 

This lirnitation of territory, as well as the number 



102 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

(one hundred and twenty) appointed, sufficiently dif- 
ferentiates these officers from the twenty satraps sub- 
sequently appointed by Darius Hystaspes, and renders 
nugatory the suggestion that this statement has any- 
thing to do with the later organization of the entire 
empire under the Hystaspean regime. Possibly the 
method of Darius (Gobryas) on the smaller scale, it- 
self, perhaps, in part a continuance of a preexisting 
system,* may have suggested the method on the larger 
scale for the entire empire; just as it is most probable 
that the method whereby Cyrus made his approaches 
to Babylon, thus making ''fighting" almost useless, and 
successful resistance improbable in their disaffection to 
the ruling dynasty, may have suggested to Darius Hys- 
taspes the same method when Babylon was in revolt 
against him, rather than the reverse, that the secular 
writers should stupidly transfer to Cyrus what from its 
nearness to their own times must have been well known 
to have belonged to the unsuccessful stratagems of the 
later times of the Persian king.f 

(5) That Gobryas was ''of the seed of the Medes" 
is suggested and accords well with the fact that he was 



* Cf. Dan. li, 49, with vi, 2. 

+ See H. C, M.s p. 524, for this singular verdict. But Herodotos positively 
states that Darius, " Though he had recourse to every kind of stratagem and arti- 
fice against the Babylonians," yet " even so he could not take them, and having 
tried other stratagems, he made trial of that also by which Cyrus had taken them. 
However, the Babylonians kept strict guard, and he was not able to surprise 
them" (iii, 152). " The feast," the disaflfection, the treacher^'^ were now want- 
ing, and these are what made possible the success of Cyrus in his arduous under- 
taking (1 Sec, 191). Why Herodotos in a fiction should attribute success to 
this scheme in the case of Cyrus, and failure in the <?ase of Darius, is incompre- 
hensible, 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 103 

governor of Kurdistan, a country certainly 
under Median jurisdiction, and with a popu- Jian extrac- 
lation largely of IMedian Kurdish tribes or gov^ernorship 
clans. That he stood high in the favor and ^fKurdistan. 
confidence of Cyrus and was of noble lineage seems 
established by the facts that he bore a title of royalty 
peculiarly Median and Persian, and was in command of 
the army ; his ability and trustworthiness in civil affairs 
also being attested by his being at once intrusted with 
the civil as well as the military control of the kingdom 
wrested from Nabonidos. 

(6) Seventeen years after the capture of Babylon 
a person of this name, a son of Mardonius, an ancestor 
of that Mardonius who was left by Xerxes ^^. ^ ^^^ 
in Greece to complete its conquest and was the^'^^n^^me 
slain at Platea, was among the conspirators, ?S^ns^pira^ 
who succeeded (B. C. 521) in placing 
Darius Hystaspes on the throne instead of the mur- 
dered Smerdes Gomates. In the list of conspirators 
furnished by Darius, and also by Herodotos and others, 
he as well as the rest of the conspirators are said to be 
Persian princes. As Darius himself was distinctively 
a Persian, in no way at that date connected by mar- 
riage or descent with the IMedes, or the Median royal 
family, whatsoever other claim or claims he may legiti- 
mately have had to the throne or empire, so large a part 
of which had come from the accession of Media, none 
could come from Median consanguinity; and it was 
natural, therefore, that he should prefer that his king- 
ship should come more immediately from the action 



104 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

of those of his own nationality, thus also evincing the 
dominance of Persia, which, hereafter, it was his evi- 
dent intention to make more and more independent 
of a distinctively Median contingent, and to sink its 
severalty indistinguishably into that of his own nation- 
ality. In this his position was different from that of 
Cyrus and Cambyses, who were in some way of the 
"seed" of both the Median and Persian royal houses. 
If in giving out this list of conspirators as Persians 
he acted on the principles which, according to Herod- 
otos, he set forth in his exhortation to the other six 
princes, his statement of their nationality may not be 
strictly correct, but have put upon it the coloring which 
would best accord with his purposes. ''When a lie 
must be told let it be told, for we all aim at the same 
ends, both they who tell lies and they who keep the 
truth. Some tell lies when by persuading with false- 
hoods they are likely to gain some advantage, while 
others speak the truth in order that, by the truth, they 
may acquire some advantage, and something further 
may be intrusted to them ; thus by different processes 
we arrive at the same end" (iii, §13). But be this as 
it may, the Gobryas of the conspiracy cannot well be 
accepted as he of the Babylonian conquest. At the 
murder of Smerdes he would have been in his eight- 
ieth year, while the entire procedure of this prince 
indicates him to be a much younger man; and if of 
Median extraction, most thoroughly Persianized. He 
is also set down as the "son of Mardonius." It is pos- 
sible, however, that this Mardonius may have been a 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 105 

son of Gobryas (Darius). Assuming, hypothetically, 
that Mardonius was born B. C. 575 (in his father's 
twenty-sixth year), in B. C. 521 he would be fifty- four 
years old. If his son, the second Gobryas, was born, 
say, B. C. 550, in 521 he would be twenty-nine years 
old, an age which would accord well with his zeal and 
energy, in word and deed, with the representations 
made by Herodotos. If in the twenty-fifth year of his 
age, B. C. 525, his son Mardonius was born, at the 
accession of Xerxes he would be in his forty-first year, 
B. C. 485, an age which would very well agree with his 
influence at court and his standing in the army, as 
general in chief of the forces left to subject Greece. 
In the third generation a scion of the Median royal 
house might easily have become so identified with the 
Persians as to have lost all interest in his Median an- 
cestry or country, and indeed, as often happens in the 
change from one habitat to another, to have a stronger 
love for the new than for the old country and con- 
nections. 

There are not wanting, however, indications of a 
Median nationality among the seven conspirators. 
Thus in the Median form of the Behistun inscription 
Darius makes mention of a Median general named 
Intaphernes whom he employed in suppressing a Baby- 
Ionian revolt; a name the same as that of one of the 
seven, who was introduced to the rest by Otanes as a 
friend, and "as one in whom he could place most re- 
liance" (Her., iii, §70 ; R, P., vol. vii, 39, p. 104), Otanes 
in all probability being "of the ^eed of the Medes," 



106 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Indeed, in the case of Otanes, one of the most in- 
fluential and independent of the seven, a peculiar 
agreement was entered into, when finally he withdrew 
from further connection with the conspirators' proceed- 
ings. In their discussions of the course which it 
seemed most advisable to pursue, and the form of 
government best to be established, Otanes gave it as 
his opinion ^'that we should do away with the mon- 
archy and exalt the people, for in the many all things 
are found." Possibly in this advice he was influenced 
by observing the evident purpose and tendency among 
the Persians, though fewer in numbers, to ignore the 
Medes, a tendency which he found no other way of 
counteracting. When, however, the opinion of Otanes, 
who was anxious to introduce equality among the 
Persians, was overruled, he thus spoke in the midst of 
them : "Associates, since it is evident that some one of us 
must be made king, either appointed by you or by the 
body of the Persians intrusting the government to 
whom they may choose, or by some other way, now I 
will enter into no competition with you, for I wish 
neither to govern nor to be governed. But on this condi- 
tion I give up all claims to the government, that neither 
I nor any of my posterity may be subject to any of you." 
To these terms the rest agreed, and further determined 
"that to Otanes and his posterity forever, if the kingdom 
should devolve upon any other of the seven, should 
be given a Median vest yearly by way of distinction, 
together with all such presents as are accounted most 
honorable among the Persians" (Her., iii, 34). There 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 107 

does not seem to be any other reason why this gift 
should be a ''Median vesf than that as Medes he and 
his posterity were to be thereby recognized and ac- 
knowledged as free from the obligations which as Per- 
sians they would be under, in common with the Persian 
princes ; and that by this distinctive garb or decoration 
their Median origin and special privileges would 
neither be forgotten nor ignored. That he had some 
special claim to the "government" is clearly indicated 
by his own statement, and by the readiness with which 
his ''giving up all claims" to it was accepted on the 
conditions which he himself had proposed; and these 
conditions convey the impression that his abdication or 
withdrawal was occasioned by his conviction that the 
whole matter was solely in the hands of the Persians, 
and that it was utterly hopeless to contend against their 
power and numbers. No Mede at that period in their 
history, with the record of the Median Smerdes fresh in 
their memory, stood any chance of receiving Persian 
suffrages for the monarchical succession. 

With these facts, coincidences and suggestions be- 
fore us, and duly weighed, it is hoped that it is not 
hazarding too much to submit that there is sufficient 
justification for accepting as true the statement that 
Darius the INIedian, the son of Ahasuerus (Cyaxares 
I) in Daniel, Ahasuerus (Cyaxares II) of Ezra iv, 6, 
Cyaxares II of Xenophon, and Gobryas (Ugbaru) 
governor of Kurdistan and Babylon of the cuneiform 
inscriptions, are but different names for one and the 
same person, and that enough at least is established to 



108 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

warrant the behef that Daniel wrote with absolute 
accuracy and in perfect accord with the monuments; 
that on the night of the day on which he had interpret- 
ed the handwriting upon the wall and had in conse- 
quence been made third ruler of the kingdom, the 
second ruler ^'Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans 
was slain, and Darius the Median took the kingdom, 
being about threescore and two years old;'' this note 
of age being very important and contributing largely 
to this identification. As before stated, it is not at all 
likely that the Gobryas of the conspirators was the 
Gobryas who led the army of Cyrus into Babylon, but 
the finding of Intaphernes among the conspirators, and 
the incident concerning Otanes seem to justify the 
conclusion that he was a son, and therefore of the 
"seed of the" Median royal house. 

This incident in the story of the overthrow of the 

usurper Smerdes and the accession of Darius son of 

(c) By the Hystaspes may also suggest a reason for the 

ous disap" sudden disappearance of Darius from Bibli- 
pearance of i^, r ii- 

Gobryas and cal historv, and Gobrvas from secular his- 

Darius from "^ 

history. tory, namely, the evident purpose of the 

Persians as soon as possible to supersede the Medes 
in the management and from prominence in the af- 
fairs of the empire. The very assumption of the 
governorship of the kingdom of the Chaldeans may not 
have been altogether agreeable to the Persian nobility, 
and it may have been only professedly to honor Darius 
(Gobryas) that he was permitted to resume the govern- 
orship of the distant Kurdistan, with his capital at th^ 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 109 

northern Ekbatana, or ''Achmetha," but really to get 
him out of the governorship of Babylon and its 
province, the most important and conspicuous in the 
empire, into one of less importance and influence, and 
where he would be almost lost to sight. 

(7) That he either voluntarily and by permission 
returned to Media, or had been authoritatively, if not 
arbitrarily, transferred to its government. By his re- 

, . , . 1 r 1 1 turntoEkba- 

seems to explain the singular fact that when tana, where 

the proela- 

Darius Hystaspes made search for the mat ion of 

•^ ^ Cyrus was 

proclamation of Cyrus, ''in the house of the J^u^^Hystas^ 
rolls at Babylon, it could not there be ^^^' 
found." It was, however, found at ''Achmetha* (Ek- 
batana), in the palace that is in the province of Media" 
(Ezra VI, 2). Its presence therein seems fairly to 
justify the inference that Gobryas (Darius) ejected 
or removed, as above suggested, or, having of his own 
accord retired to his paternal estates, had in withdraw- 
ing carried with him ''the rolls" or "archives," the 



♦Under '^Achmetha," the new Bi3/e Dictionary^ edited hy Hastings, gives 
Hamadan (the southern Ekbatana) as clearly the Ekbatana of Tobit, vi, 5, "where 
it is represented as lying midway between Nineveh and Rhages." The accuracy 
of this description or decision may be best tested by comparing the latitude and 
longitude of the several places with it. These are as follows, all except Nineveh 
and Rhages taken from the article to which reference is made: Nineveh, 36° 21' 
N., 43** 13' K.; Ekbatana (Takht-i-Sulayman), 36° 25' N., 47° 10' E.; Hamadan, 
34° 8' N., 48^ 3'E.; Rhages, 35° 37' N.; 51° 46' E. From this it will be seen that 
Tobit's description is almost accurate when applied to Ekbatana (modem name 
Takht-i-Sulayman), but does not fit in at all with the geographical relation of 
Hamadan to the other places named. It must also be remembered that Tobit re- 
fers to the city as it existed in the times, or prior to the era of Esar-haddon and 
the destruction of Nineveh. The northern city also accords better with the de- 
scription given by Herodotos, and gives consistency and additional credibility to 
his story and the descent and conquest of Cyrus the Persian's military invasion 
and migration southward. 



110 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

records of the transactions which had accumulated dur- 
ing his governorship over Babylon and the Chaldeans; 
and as Ekbatana was never the capital of the Medo- 
Persian or Persian empire, it is difficult otherwise to 
account for the finding of this "roll," the official decree 
of Cyrus, in the palace of the Median kingdom or 
province, so distant as it was from either Babylon or 
Shushan. The policy which in his earlier career made 
it apparently necessary for Cyrus to confide so much 
in the Median leaders may have given place to a very 
different line of action when he was firmly established 
in his empire ; and to Cambyses and the Persian princes 
it would seem expedient to get clear of those who had 
such elements of popularity or ability as might fit them 
for leadership in the case of revolts or seditious re- 
bellions in the empire. 

(8) The importance and significance of the state- 
ment of Josephus that Darius the Median "had another 
B theiden- ^^^^ among the Greeks'' may now appear. 
G^Jee^k and ^^^^ record may, perhaps, be best accounted 
mnVtar"? for by. the fact that to the Jews what was 
name. known of this ruler was obtained only from 

Daniel, and that Josephus, understanding Darius to be 
a title only, and not a personal name, refers them to 
the Greeks for its identification. 

It is possible that one reason among others for the 
form in which Daniel puts the account of the extinction 
of the Chaldean empire is, as before stated or intimated, 
that Belshazzar had been slain in the attack and for- 
cible entry of the Persians into the palace, timed in 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 111 

collusion with the disaffected nobles and hierarchy, 
and that by the conspirator's invitation the commander 
'*took the kingdom," and was by them immediately 
saluted as ^^king of the Chaldeans ;" his governorship 
being afterward confirmed by his suzerain, ^'Cyrus 
king of Persia." 

Now, the Greek name of the commander who, ac- 
cording to Xenophon, had forced his way into the 
palace of the slain king, was GOBRYAS. In the 
cuneiform inscriptions unearthed within the half cen- 
tury last past, and until then utterly unknown to his- 
tory, the Babylonian name is found, and is now trans- 
literated UGBARU. As we have seen, the period and 
functions allotted by Daniel to Darius and by the 
inscriptions to Ugbaru in Babylon and Chaldea are 
identical; it would, therefore, seem that both names 
belong to one and the same person. 

Of the absolute identity of the Greek and cuneiform 
names (an identity impossible to be established until 
revealed by the late exhumations) it is scarcely possible 
to doubt. For it will be seen that the essential con- 
sonantal elements are the same in each, as is also the 
final vowel ^'U," the difference being in the syllabifi- 
cation and vocalization, the Greek also appending its 
masculine terminal -as. Thus we have in Ugbaru and 
in Tcjfipvag 

Cuneiform vowels, U A U 

\ / / 

Consonants, common to both, G B R 

Greek vowels, O U — AS, Greek, masc. terminal affix. 

In the new Bible Dictionary the transliteration is Gu- 



112 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

baru, a liberty taken with this name similar, apparently, 
to that in the transformation of Sir-'-la-ai, as Schrader 
has it, the name of the home of the Hittite Akhaabu, 
into Ahab Sir'il ; thus forcing it to be more like what 
it is by no means certain that it was ever intended to 
represent, namely, Israel. 

This name, Gobryas, given in the Greek as the name 
of the ^'taker" of Babylon under Cyrus, being a 
Grecized form of the name, fulfills the conditions re- 
quired by the statement of Josephus for identification, 
and it indissolubly connects the Babylonian inscrip- 
tional name, UGBARU, with the person bearing the 
titular appellative Darius, who is definitely identified 
as the son of Ahasuerus, the Median king Cyaxares I, 
and therefore the brother of Astyages (Istuvegu) ; 
his (Darius's) personal Median name being as found 
in Ezra iv, 6, Ahasuerus, the Hebrew equivalent of 
Cyaxares. 

Is it, now, too much to claim that this most remark- 
able identity of these two names, Gobryas and Ugbaru, 
apparently totally unknown to Josephus, and unknown 
to history, incapable of verification until after the un- 
earthing of the buried cuneiform inscriptions, is abso- 
lutely conclusive of the identity of ''Darius the Median" 
with "Gobryas — UGBARU," indisputably the name of 
the general commanding the beleaguering Persian 
forces, who made himself master of the impregnable 
city, and "took the kingdom of the Chaldeans," incon- 
testibly the first governor of his conquest, contempo- 
raneously with the first year of the reign of Cyrus the 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 113 

Persian as king paramount over Babylon, the first 
year; indeed, in which Babylon formed a part of the 
vast realm of the Medes and Persians? "I trow not."* 

* It is very evident that the information of Xenophon was very limited, and in 
many respects inaccurate in regard to the Assyrian and Babylonian history. He 
does not seem to have clearly apprehended the march of events in the closing 
period of the Assyrian and the early period of the Babylonian domination. There 
is a strange confusion and mixture of Assyrian and Chaldean, and of the Median 
and Persian contention in that part of Asia, which makes it difficult, if not impos- 
sible, to arrange or harmonize his story with what is found in other historic sources 
of information. 

It is observable, however, that his account of Cyaxares, prior to the taking of 
Babylon, coincides in certain particulars with both Daniel and the inscriptions, in 
the view that the names Cyaxares, Darius the Median, and Gobryas identify the 
same person. Thus Cyaxares is called and claims to be a king (Bk. i, ch. v. sec. 2; 
Bk. V, ch. X, sec. 8), his capital being in northern Media. The inscriptions, as we 
have seen, make Gobryas to have been governor of Gutium, or Kurdistan, which 
seems at that time to have included northern Media, where, also. Xenophon states, 
that some time after the fall of Babylon he was visited by Cyrus. So, also, we 
have seen that Daniel makes Darius to be the son of Ahasuerus, a Median of 
the royal house of the conquerors of Nineveh. 

It must be said, however, that in Xenophon they are set before us as distinctly 
separate persons, and different in their relations to Cyrus. But his story as to 
Gobryas, his making of him an Assyrian, and other matters, seem altogether in- 
compatible with the inscriptions and with what is well known of the history of 
that period. For at that time no Assyrian king was in existence, nor was there 
any existent Assyrian empire or kingdom, nor had any Assyrian monarch been 
master of Gutium since the fall of Nineveh, when all that region passed under 
Median rule. There is no likelihood that the story of Gobryas as told in 
Xenophon is true, nor is it at all consistent with the actual conditions of the region 
dominated by the then existent government that any such surrender as that 
described by Xenophon should or could be made. Both names might, therefore, 
be justly rejected from authentic history, if collateral evidence were not elsewhere 
found that both were real and belonged to one and the same person, described or 
identified in Holy Scripture as Darius the Median, son of Ahasuerus, the king of 
the Chaldeans ; in the cuneiform inscriptions as Gobryas (Ugbaru) governor of 
Gutium (Kurdistan), commander of the forces into whose hands Babylon fell, and 
of which he immediately assumed the kingship or chief of the government offices 
under Cyrus his suzerain, the king of Persia. 

8 



114 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 



V* Matters Subsidiary 

For matter somewhat germane to the foregoing, 

turning to Jer. xxv, 8-14, we find the prediction that the 

Date of the dominion of Babylon was to continue but 
fall of Nine- '' 

veil. seventy years, at the end of which period 

Babylon was to be punished ''with desolations." Now, 
the fall of Babylon, and with it the passing away for- 
ever of all power and dominion from the Babylono- 
Chaldean empire, occurred under Cyrus, B. C. 538, 
just seventy years after the fall of Nineveh, B. C. 607, 
counting, according to the most frequent Oriental 
usage, the first and last year of the series as full years. 
( I ) The beginning of the dominion or suzerainty of 
Cyrus over Babylon and its governor is fixed in the 
Ptolemaic Canon at B. C. 538. His first year after 
its conquest was contemporaneous with the first year 
of Darius the Median (Gobryas, as well), as is herein 
shown. In that first year Ezra (i, i, 2, etc.) gives to 
Cyrus the title ^'king of Persia," and the same year 
gives to him (v, 13) the title "king of Babylon," a title 
which he himself also claimed (//. C. and M,, pp. 506, 
514) and which, consequently, is never given in Daniel 
to Darius, who is known to this writer only as "king of 
the Chaldeans," or "which was made king over the 
realm of the Chaldeans;" nor is this title "king of 
Persia," nor that of "king of Babylon," ever given by 
Ezra to Ahasuerus (Dan. v, 31; ix, i; Ezra iv, 6). 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 115 

Both these names, as is herein contended, belong to one 
person, the latter being his proper or family name, the 
former his throne name or title. As neither the title 
*'king of Babylon'' nor that of "king of Persia" is 
ascribed to this person, he is properly omitted in the 
Canon or list of Ptolemy, the title and place in the list 
being properly given to the superior or suzerain Cyrus, 
who for the time seems to have made Babylon, the then 
greatest city of the Orient, the capital of his empire ; an 
incidental, but not the less significant testimony to the 
strict accuracy of the narratives of Daniel and Ezra. 
The date of the conquest of Babylon, its first Persian 
governorship, the first year of its subjection to Cyrus 
the Persian, and the extension of the Chaldean empire 
are, therefore, conclusively fixed in B. C. 538. 

(2) This date, B. C. 538, taken in connection with 
the Biblical limit of seventy years for the existence of 
this last Chaldean or Semitic kingdom, somewhat sum- 
marily disposes of the controversy as to the date of the 
final destruction of Nineveh and the Assyrian empire, 
no countenance whatever being thereby given to a date 
earlier than B. C. 607. Thus the Biblical account sup- 
plements and gives additional credibility to the monu- 
ments and secular histories ; and by its incidental man- 
ner of introducing these matters, and making possible 
these and other synchronisms, but especially this par- 
ticular one, adds to the utter improbability of a date 
for the writing of the book of Daniel later than that 
of contemporaneity with his own lifetime and the dates 
of the events themselves. 



116 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

A more explicit statement of the contemporaneity 

of Cyrus may be made. From Jer. xxix, lo, Daniel 

Cyrus and in the first year of the rei2:n of Darius the 

Darius con- ^ 

temporary. Median Understood that the seventy years 
of Jerusalem's desolation were about at an end. He 
therefore betook himself to prayer and supplication 
for the fulfillment of the prediction. This was in the 
first year of the reign of Darius. While yet speaking 
and praying, Gabriel appeared and informed Daniel 
that at the beginning of his supplication the command- 
ment for the rebuilding of Jerusalem came forth. 
Turning to 2 Chron. xxxvi, 22; Ezra xii, i, the state- 
ment is found that the proclamation was issued in the 
first year of Cyrus king of Persia. It therefore inde- 
feasibly follows that the first year of Cyrus king of 
Persia was the same year as the first year of Darius 
the king of the Chaldeans at Babylon. But Babylon 
was a city, and the Chaldeans were conquered sub- 
jects of Cyrus king of Persia. It therefore follows 
that Darius ruled but a part of the Persian empire, 
while Cyrus reigned supreme over all its cities and 
kingdoms or domain. 

The Geographical Situation of Ancient 

Persia 
(3) As supplementing the suggestions already sub- 
mitted as to the early situation of Persia in the north, 
it may be well to attempt, at least, to account for the 
change to the south land, while yet authenticating for 
this historic period a story consistent with that found 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 117 

in Herodotos, the fragmentary inscriptions, and the 
book of Daniel. As before intimated, it is thought that 
the northern locahty, adjoining Media's westward 
border, agrees best with the accounts as gathered from 
these various sources, as the country from which was 
entered upon and continued the struggle with Media, 
the western campaigns, and especially as the starting 
point for his subsequent conquests in the south, and 
gives consistency to the narratives of the after events 
and course of Cyrus. His crossing the Tigris near 
Arbela indicates a descent from the mountainous 
north, and was followed by his migratory and militant 
march along the rivers, through Mesopotamia as far 
as Babylon, and possibly to the gulf or sea which as 
late as the reign of Sennacherib seems to have been 
distinguished from the Upper (Caspian) Sea as the 
''Lower Sea." 

It seems most probable, if not absolutely certain, that 
the region now known as Persia was not any of it occu- 
pied by the Aryan clans "of Parsuas,'' nor was either 
land or gulf or sea into which Euphrates pours its 
flood known as "Persian" until later than even the 
regnal time of Darius, son of Hystaspes. The early 
date of Daniel and this later application of the names 
"Persia" and "Persian" to this territory are indicated 
by the statement of Daniel that in the third year of 
Belshazzar, which was just before the fall of Babylon, 
"Shushan (Susa) the palace was [still] in the province 
of Elam" (Dan. viii, 2). Nor was Susa (Shushan) 
in Persia when Smerdes was murdered. For Darius 



118 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

came from Persia, where his father was governor, to 
Susa, and there joined the conspirators (Her., iii, 
§70; Raw., A, H.J vol. iii, p. 437). If it be objected 
that there is no indication either of the direction or of 
the distance traveled by Darius, that is freely granted, 
but is thought to be oJftset by what seem to be the facts, 
that in all previous references to the Persian the 
.northern location is most agreeable to or is required 
by the context, and that the time from the coming of the 
Persian hosts into that part of the recently acquired 
empire had been too short for the supplanting of the 
native name, whatever that might have been, by the 
aHen name of Persia ; and that such change at that date 
was hampered by the fact that in the imperial title 
Persia seemed to be inferior to the Medians, whose 
great monarchy long antedated and overshadowed the 
less numerous and hitherto less feared Parsuans. 

Of course, in the partial disintegration or distribu- 
tion of the several peoples composing the vast host of 
Cyrus, and the change of its personnel, the Medes would : 
gravitate to their own former and perhaps better 
land, and all the more so as their relative supremacy 
was rapidly declining; while the Persians, really then 
without a country to which they could possibly with 
safety return, advancing toward or having attained the 
primacy, and their capital being no longer in the in- 
clement north, but alternating between Babylon and 
Susa, would necessarily remain in the region selected 
by Persian authority as the center of their influence; 
and as maintaining or increasing their prestige would, 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 119 

carefully retaining their own national designation and 
names, be distributed through this southern land, from 
which its former name would be displaced, disappear, 
and be forgotten ; much as was the case in this western 
hemisphere. But in the absence of an accessible litera- 
ture, or the more modern facility for keeping record of 
what was learned from them, much more quickly would 
the new take the place, and the old or native names 
disappear and be forgotten, than when Europeans took 
the place of the aborigines and introduced themselves 
and their own names. In the brief period covered by 
the historic part of the book of Daniel this change could 
not possibly have been made, but the transformation, 
begun soon after the complete organization and con- 
solidation into one empire had been effected, would 
proceed rapidly to its consummation, and under the 
favor and influence of the Hystaspean regime it passed 
into history by the name which it now bears, and, in the 
absence of the history and name of its former inhabit- 
ants, has reflected this new name into the more remote 
history of Cyrus, and thereby created somewhat of 
confusion and misinterpretation of the narratives of 
later writers, and the early supposed geographical iden- 
tifications. 

As to the preoccupants of at least the southwestern 
and perhaps the southern districts of what is now called 
Persia, it seems inferable from the inscriptions of 
Sennacherib that they were in part Chaldeans. For in 
his sixth campaign he found that the remaining in- 
habitants of Bit-yukin, with whom after his defeat 



120 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

Merodach-baladan had taken refuge, still fearing the 
Assyrian's ''powerful arms," had fled across ''the 
great sea of the rising sun'' (the Persian Gulf), "and 
set their homes in the city of Nagitu, in the land of 
Elam." This seems to indicate that Elam at this time 
extended to the "great sea," and covered the parts con- 
tiguous to the seacoast. He, therefore, "in ships" 
built or furnished by "Syrians," embarked and pursued 
them, and seized the coastwise districts then in Elam, 
whose king had been the abettor, if not the instigator, 
of the Chaldean inroads. 

This indication of the Chaldean occupation remark- 
ably chimes in with Isaiah's expression (xliii, 14) ut- 
tered at or near this time : "The cry of the Chaldeans 
is in their ships" (Rev. Ver., "in the ships of their 
rejoicing"). It also accounts for their easy escape 
under Baladan and Segub from the victorious Assyri- 
ans, they being usually unprepared for pursuit by 
water. It may also explain the movement, during the 
siege, of a division of the effective part of the army of 
Cyrus southward of Babylon toward Ereck, Bit-yukin, 
etc., while Cyrus went northward to the lake, into 
which, having turned "the river by means of a canal, 
he made the ancient channel fordable by the sinking of 
the river." Gobryas was left with his division to enter 
through the river gates, left open either through col- 
lusion or neglect, and thus to possess himself of the 
renowned capital of the Orient. The stationing of such 
a force south of the city was doubtless a necessary pre- 
cautionary military expedient, to prevent the Chaldeans 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 121 

from reinforcing their king. Such irruptions as would 
have been possible might delay or even frustrate the 
taking of the city. They would certainly have proved 
seriously embarrassing to the operations of the Median 
commander of the beleaguering forces, to whom was 
left the completion of the siege of the enemies' capital 
and the utter dismemberment of the last Chaldeo- 
Semitic kingdom. 

It is singularly in accord with the above that Xeno- 
phon states that: 'When the affairs in Babylon ap- 
peared to him so favorably settled that he (Cyrus) 
might absent himself from thence, he prepared, and 
directed others to prepare, for a journey into Persia." 
It is to be kept in mind, now, that his starting point in 
this journey is Babylon. ''When," continues Xenophon, 
''in the course of their march they came to Media 
Cyrus turned aside to visit Cyaxares," who is repre- 
sented as reigning in full control of Media. From 
thence he continued his march to Persia. On his 
return march he again visited Cyaxares, and at this 
time is reported to have received the Median monarch's 
daughter in marriage, with whom, after a brief stay, 
he departed on his return journey to Babylon. 

As Media was very far north of Babylon, this 
"march" or "journey" most assuredly indicates that 
ancient Persia, in Xenophon's day, was understood to 
have been at least as far north as Media, both before 
and when Babylon came under the dominion of Cyrus. 
It points also to the theory that his direct northern 
route led him westward of Media and its capital, to 



122 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

reach which, whether the northern or the southern 
Ekbatana, it was necessary for him to "turn aside" 
eastward. It matters not for our purpose whether this 
march was really made or not. The incontrovertible 
fact that he did make record of such a journey or 
march of Cyrus in the described northerly direction 
from Babylon to Persia renders it absolutely certain 
that in Xenophon's time his geography placed ancient 
Parsuas, or Persia, far up in the north, and not in 
the south land with its border upon the Indian Ocean. 
Certainly, it was subsequently to his time, and to the 
accession of Darius the son of Hystaspes, but how long 
thereafter is unknown, when that floral land, the de- 
light of poesy and romance, came into the possession of 
the name Persia, and so passed into the maps and 
historic geography of all the later ages (Xen., Cyrop,, 
bk. viii, ch. v, sec. i, et seq,). 

Assumed Disagreements of Jeremiah and Daniel 
It is, perhaps, necessary to give some attention to the 
charges that Daniel and Jeremiah disagree as to certain 
chronological statements. Thus, Daniel states that 
'Tn the third year of Jehoiakim king of Judah came 
Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto Jerusalem, and 
besieged it" (i, i). This is said to be in contradiction 
of Jer. XXV, I, which reads: "In the fourth year of 
Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that was the 
first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,'' etc., 
etc. To this the reply has been made that the clause 
is not in the Septuagint. This, however, can have but 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 123 

little or no weight with those who rely upon the integ- 
rity of the Masoretic Hebrew text. It is, perhaps, 
better to emphasize the fact that Daniel does not say 
what year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign this was, but 
simply that in Jehoiakim's ''third year'' he came to Je- 
rusalem and besieged it. Neither does Jeremiah say 
that the fourth year of Jehoiakim's reign was the first 
year of Nebuchadnezzar's reign. There is, therefore, 
no contradiction as to the year, since there is nothing 
to show that both referred to the same year, or that 
indicates that the years could not be other than the 
same. There is no contradiction as to the matter or the 
event referred to by each. They are distinctly differ- 
ent, and have no relation the one to the other. What, 
according to Daniel, happened in Jehoiakim's third year 
was the siege of Jerusalem and the giving of tribute 
as a vassal; this vassalage being, doubtless, the same 
referred to in 2 Kings xxiv, i : ''In his days Nebuchad- 
nezzar king of Babylon came up, and Jehoiakim be- 
came his servant three years: then he turned and re- 
belled against him." What happened In his fourth 
year was, according to Jeremiah, that ''the word of 
the Lord came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of 
Judah," threatening judgments through the instrumen- 
tality of "the families of the north" and "Nebuchadnez- 
zar." Warnings against the prevalent wickedness had 
been uttered by Jeremiah in the beginning of the reign 
of Jehoiakim, but in this fourth year the threats take a 
more definite and specific form. The disastrous results, 
doubtless, began to be realized at the close of the three 



124 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

years of acknowledged vassalage, when the nations 
were let loose against Judah, and the predictions were 
fulfilled in the dethronement, murder, or captivity of its 
monarchs, and the destruction of its sacred capital (cf. 
2 Kings xxiv, i, 2; Jer. vii; xxv, i, 2; xxvi, I, etc.). 
It is further objected that because Jeremiah, in the 
fourth year of Jehoiakim, in predicting what would, 
after that fourth year, happen in Judea, does not men- 
tion the siege of Jerusalem, which according to Daniel 
had taken place in the year preceding, and yet names 
Nebuchadnezzar as God's instrument to bring punish- 
ment upon the Hebrews, it therefore follows that there 
was no siege in third Jehoiakim, and that consequently 
Jeremiah did not have knowledge nor could have writ- 
ten of it. But a very cursory reading of that twenty- 
fifth chapter will show that the prophet's care was for 
the future. He enters upon no details as to the past, 
does not name a single incident, judgment, reverse, or 
calamity in their past history. He simply reminds them 
that for ''twenty-three years from the thirteenth year 
of Josiah the son of Amon" (B. C. 628-605) he, on the 
authority of Jehovah, had earnestly warned them, as 
had also other prophets, of the fearful calamities which 
in the future must result from their persistent wicked- 
ness, and yet they had not changed their course. He 
now, probably in the lull occasioned by the Chaldean's 
conflict with Necho, assures them of the certainty of 
their approaching doom, and, to impress them with its 
nearness, names as the leader of the vast army or host 
of multitudinous peoples that would be against them 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 125 

and lay their city and kingdom in ruins, a king of 
whose terrible prowess they had, according to Daniel, 
just received a practical demonstration, and whose 
very name would revive their fears. He catalogues 
none of the calamities that had befallen them^ but 
earnestly concentrates their attention upon what were 
to be the future results of their continued perverseness 
and disobedience. Certainly, for his purpose, the nam- 
ing of so recent an event as last year's siege would have 
added but little to the influence which it was already 
exerting, and the memory of which would be revived 
by the naming of Nebuchadnezzar. Silence, therefore, 
served a better purpose than needless repetition. Si- 
lence such as this, or the assumption of the ignorance 
of Jeremiah, cannot legitimately be construed as evi- 
dence of the falsity of the positive statement of Daniel, 
no more than could the silence of a witness concerning 
a matter to which his attention had not been expressly 
directed, but concerning which another witness had 
given positive testimony, be held as sufficient evidence 
of the falsity of such positive testimony. A confession 
of Ignorance, even, as to this matter would not be suf- 
ficient to discredit such testimony. A disinterested 
witness must be taken to speak the truth unless there is 
some other objection to it than mere silence or sup- 
posed ignorance on the part of others. In the case of 
Daniel there is no conceivable personal interest to be 
subserved by the introduction of the **siege" into his 
narrative, no matter when written, nor any reason for 
the statement whatever^ if it is not true. In his case 



126 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

the probabiHties are altogether in favor of its truthful- 
ness. It was of the very first importance to the king of 
Babylon that his rightful authority should be promptly 
asserted and firmly established over this part of the 
conquered and dismembered Assyrian empire. Nothing 
could more effectually do this than the bringing into 
subjection the Jewish kingdom, at that time really the 
strongest and most important landed power in that 
part of Syria. The fact that about the date of the fall 
of Nineveh it had been reduced to vassalage by Necho 
of Egypt made it all the more important and imperative 
to immediately assert the suzerain rights of the now in- 
dependent Babylono-Chaldean empire ; and the sudden 
appearance of Nebuchadnezzar before Jerusalem, and 
its siege in the second year after the fall of the Assyrian 
capital and empire, are just what might be expected of 
monarchs so enterprising as Nabopolassar and his 
greater son. 

Neither is there anything written, either in the 
monumental inscriptions or in Jeremiah, which posi- 
tively contradicts the stated fact of the siege of Jerusa- 
lem by Nebuchadnezzar in the third year of Jehoiakim, 
and the having given to him "a part of the vessels of 
the house of God." The plundering occurred later, 
nothing being then taken but what was put into his 
hands by the king (cf. 2 Kings xxiv, i, 12, 13). This 
first siege by him was evidently but feebly resisted, 
yet there is reason to believe that it and the regulation 
of the affairs of the new possessions detained him in 
Syria until the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and that it 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 127 

was from Jerusalem that, leaving the matter of the 
hostages, the tributary acquisitions, etc., with Ashpe- 
naz, he hastily marched to Carchemish, surprised the 
army and forces which Necho of Egypt had left for the 
defense of that key to his Syrian conquests, defeated 
them in battle with great slaughter ; in the pursuit re- 
lentlessly destroying or taking captive many of the 
Egyptians and their Greek or other allies, and so suf- 
ficiently terrorized Necho, their king, as to prevent any 
further attempt to regain the possessions wrested from 
Assyria, but to which Babylon had fallen heir from the 
"river of Egypt to the river Euphrates." On his re- 
turn from the pursuit he must have again entered 
Judea, and from thence, after his reception of the news 
of his father's death, hastened across by the most direct 
course to Babylon, to make good his succession to the 
throne. His sudden departure was opportune for the 
"coming of the word of the Lord/' and for another 
effort to bring the Judeans into harmony with Jehovah, 
and willing obedience to Babylon, by announcing to 
them the deplorable results which must follow their 
persistence in rebellion both against Jehovah and Baby- 
Ion, a foretaste of which they had just experienced. 
Thus the first year of his sole reign would be the fourth 
of Jehoiakim, and would in part be passed in Babylon 
and Syria. 

It IS claimed that a disagreement is found in the 
fact that, in this matter pertaining to third Jehoiakim, 
Daniel refers to Nebuchadnezzar as "king of Babylon," 
while Jeremiah writes that the first year of his reign 



128 Daniel, Darius the Median, and CyruS 

was contemporaneous with the fourth year of Jehoia- 
kim (xxv, i). As to this, however, several views 
may be taken. Thus, it is possible that the one uses it 
in a sense different from the other; the former, per- 
haps, applying it to him as it was applied to his father 
when he was only viceroy, as may be shown later. It 
may also be assumed as certain that when this was 
written by the author, whenever and by whomsoever 
it was written, Nebuchadnezzar was either then reign- 
ing as king of Babylon or had previously so reigned. 
If he was reigning at the time when this was written it 
is not an incredible thing to suggest that the title then 
in familiar use would from its familiarity be attached 
to the name, especially in narrating what had oc- 
curred so shortly before his actual enthronement. Such 
a "prolepsis" is not without precedent. Thus in the 
^'Babylonian Canon" or list of rulers in "Ptolemaeus,'' 
as given in Schrader's C. /. and O, T,, vol. ii, p. 198, 
in the heading above the list, all are designated as 
kings, and the several dates of the beginning of their 
reigns are given. But, certainly, Nabonassar was 
not king, but was viceroy or governor under Assyria 
in 747, nor was he ever an independent sovereign or 
king. So Nabopolassar in 625 was yet subordinate to 
his suzerain, the king of Assyria; but eighteen years 
thereafter, by the dismemberment of the Assyrian em- 
pire, he became the first king of the later and last 
Babylono-Chaldean empire. Yet that did not discredit 
the supposition that he acted as a king would act, from 
the date named until he became king over the realm 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 129 

placed under his government. In these instances they 
simply take the place of the omitted names of the 
suzerains. 

Neither is there anything unreasonable in the posi- 
tion if taken, nor anything written in the history of 
either father or son which positively is antagonistic to 
the statement that for some years, possibly from the 
beginning of the siege of Nineveh, Nebuchadnezzar 
had been made co-rex by his father, and that in this 
character had come to Jerusalem in the first year after 
the fall of Nineveh, which was the third of Jehoiakim, 
to claim and enforce on behalf of the new suzerain the 
rights and sovereignty acquired by conquest. 

All this is in perfect consistency with a rational and 
unforced interpretation of Daniel. The Hebrew hos- 
tages were all placed in Babylon under training and 
culture, in which they were to be continued three years. 
An exception seems to have been made in the case of 
the four whose names have been preserved, in conse- 
quence of the test which at the suggestion of Daniel 
had been made of a Jewish diet ; and after a ten days' 
trial they seem to have been exempted from the three 
years' course. When at the end of the three years the 
rest of these Hebrews were brought into the presence 
of the king the superiority of these four became still 
more manifest. For when the king communed with 
them, "among them all was found none like" these 
four. For, while the rest had been under the tutelage 
appointed for them, these had been in the actual serv- 
ice of the king; giving by and in this service actual 



130 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

evidence that ''God had given them knowledge and 
skill in all learning and wisdom ; and that Daniel had 
understanding in all visions and dreams'' (i, 17-21). 
And as Daniel had "stood""^ or been in the service of 
Nebuchadnezzar, as is proved by his having interpreted 
the ''dream" in this king's second year (ii, i, et seq.), 
so he "stood" f in or during "the first year of Cyrus the 
king" (i,2i). 

To the objection assumed to lie against the early date 
of the book of Daniel in the occurrence of Greek names 
of certain Greek musical instruments a brief notice 
may be given. That instruments with Greek names 
should be found in a country whose chief and greatest 
commercial city was within reach, by a navigable river, 
of the "Lower Sea" (the Persian Gulf and Indian 
Ocean) should now neither excite surprise nor awaken 
suspicion. For the country was in Ezekiel's time called 
"a land of traffic," and its great city a "city of mer- 
chants," of whom Isaiah says, "The Lord sent to Baby- 
lon, and . . . brought down . . . the Chaldeans, whose 
cry is in the ships." The monuments show that the 
people of the low country were addicted to "maritime 
habits and pursuits. In their trading they certainly 



* 117p5;''^1, " and he stood ; " LXX, loTTjaav \ Vulg., " steterunt." This inter- 
pretation of the expression, *' therefore, stood they before the king " (i. e., because 
of this superiority manifested during the three years in the presence of the king, 
accords precisely with the story of the second chapter, beginning with, " And in 
the second year of Nebuchadnezzar," and removes all ground for a charge of in- 
accuracy, inconsistency, or contradiction. It was early found that these four did 
not need the three years' course to fit them to be of valuable service to the king. 

t '^»7?^ <, "and was," i. e,, '* and (such) was Daniel during O?) the first year 
of Cyrus," king of Persia. 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 131 

have been supplied with the wares of many peoples 
of different foreign lands." It would be indeed sur- 
prising if a people so given to seafaring as the Greeks 
had not thereby found their way to the greatest city 
and commercial emporium of the Orient ; or otherwise 
by overland caravan from Mediterranean ports. For 
it is now absolutely certain that as early as the time of 
Esar-haddon and Assurbanipal the island of Cyprus 
was covered with Greek colonies. Still earlier, the 
lonians are mentioned in the inscriptions of Sargon 
(722-705), who informs us that he had ''drawn forth 
as fishes the Javanians (lonians), who are in the midst 
of the sea" (Schr., C /. and 0. T., vol. i, pp. 63, 64). 
Greeks, perhaps prisoners of war taken from Cyprus 
by Sargon, manned the fleet of Sennacherib in the 
"Lower Sea" (Persian Gulf). In a tablet dated about 
640, found at Kouyunjik, the first and fourth witnesses 
to a contract are said by Mr. Pinches to be Greeks, the 
transactions taking place in Nineveh. Add to this that 
the Egyptian army defeated by Nebuchadnezzar was 
doubtless in part made up of the Ionian (Asiatic) 
Greeks, of whom numbers must have been taken cap- 
tive, and brought, as was the custom of the times, and 
located in the immediate neighborhood of Babylon. It 
is pregnantly observable that these instruments were 
used under the direction of Nebuchadnezzar at the 
dedication of the image in the plain of Dura, the per- 
formers being, doubtless, the instrumental bands be- 
longing to the palace and the army, both home and 
foreign. The vast assembly evidently comprised con- 



132 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

tingents from the various "provinces" of the empire, 
and people of their various ''nations and languages," 
among whom it is ''unthinkable" that there should not 
be found representatives of so musically gifted a race 
as the Greeks, whether from the island province of 
Cyprus or from the Ionian Asiatic cities of the main- 
land. It is significant that these names occur only in 
the fifth, seventh, tenth, and fifteenth verses of Daniel's 
third chapter, and in connection with this great oc- 
casion of the gathering together of the '"'princes, the 
governors, and the captains, the judges, the treasurers, 
the counselors, the sheriffs, and all the rulers of the 
provinces" — a great occasion, in which the sudden out- 
burst and clangor of a vast multitude in great variety 
of such instruments was to form a very conspicuous 
and essential feature, and in which all present and 
available musicians of whatever nationality would 
likely be participants; instruments of somewhat es- 
pecial excellence and variety, and those of foreign 
origin, being distinctively named, separate and apart 
from ''all" other *'kinds of music." We may empha- 
size the fact that "all the rulers of the provinces" had 
been summoned, and as Cyprus was then within the im- 
perial domain its ruler must have been among those 
that were present; and if for no other reason or ob- 
jects than those which sufficed in the arrangement for 
the celebration of the Victorian jubilee, to bring to- 
gether in the world's metropolis natives with their 
peculiar costumes and instruments musical, military, 
etc., these several rulers of the diverse peoples would 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 133 

bring out the peculiarities of their subjects, and thus 
glorify at once themselves and their sovereign, and 
thus by active participation in the ceremonies of the 
grand gala day add greatly to its interest. It does not, 
therefore, necessarily follow that the use of these 
words, even if it could be conclusively shown that they 
were all Greek, demonstrates that the book had a later 
origin than the era of Nebuchadnezzar. Even the fact, 
if it be a fact, that one of the words is not extant in 
Greek writings earlier than Aristotle, or Alexander of 
Macedon, does not necessarily discredit this earlier 
use, since it may have been peculiar to the Cypriotic 
or Asiatic Greeks, but little of the surviving literature 
of whom is probably of a kind in which such instru- 
ments would be named. It is possible, also, that when 
used by Aristotle it came from the Asiatic Greeks ; a 
result of the greater intimacy of the European and 
Asiatic kindred, brought about by the conquests of 
Alexander. 

Reciprocity of Courteous Consideration of the 
Doubts and Difficulties Due to Both Parties 
in Controversy 

It is undoubtedly well for the upholders of the 
integrity of this book to treat with all due respect and 
placidly, patiently, unshrinkingly endeavor to answer 
all questions, to consider all the difficulties, to solve 
all the conundrums and meet the various objections, 
great and small, of the doubters of this integrity. But 
it seems well to suggest that difficulties, conundrums, 



134 Daniel> Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

questionings present themselves to the believer, as to 
the theories and conclusions, both inferential and dog- 
matic, of the doubter; many of which theories and 
conclusions, to some, at least, seem largely to rest upon 
assumptions or misinterpretations, the minifying of the 
supernatural, its partial or entire rejection, the undue 
exaltation of mere naturalism, or other like matters. 
As to the theory of a later date for the book of Daniel, 
it seems difficult to conceive how it would have been 
possible, at any time after the Macedonian conquest, 
for a writer with the mental endowment, the literary 
culture and ability required, to concoct such matter as 
is found in this book, and yet in the greatly changed 
conditions of the empire escape the modifying influence 
of Greek customs, history and literature, the then cur- 
rent patois and vocabulary, and how he could and why 
he should write and combine, without the then existing 
necessity therefor, both Hebrew and Chaldaic, as ac- 
curately as in the earlier days. It is difficult for the 
upholder to understand, for example, and it would be 
a courtesy to him for the doubter, if possible, satis- 
factorily to show how the writer, if writing at any time 
after the Macedonian conquest, could know and why he 
should introduce in his history the name of Belshazzar, 
a name utterly unknown to other historians, except as 
derived from this book ; and how this late writer hap- 
pened to have this exclusive knowledge that Belshazzar 
lived at the date assigned? Yet that he then lived is 
no longer matter of controversy, but is indisputably 
proved by records which were buried out of sight, un- 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 135 

known, unread in the days of the Maccabees, and have 
only been deciphered in the later years of this century. 
There is difficulty in accounting for the inserting of the 
name, title and story of Darius the Median by a writer 
of the later date, since the introduction of so many 
names of persons at that day utterly unheard of would 
increase the liability of its rejection as actual history, 
and tend to cause its exclusion from the sacred canon. 
In truth, it would seem that, historically, the crea- 
tion of this book, as it now exists, at any time subse- 
quent to the loss of the cuneiform inscriptions would 
be as marvelously supernatural or miraculous as even 
the escape from the fiery furnace ; and that the theory 
of its Maccabean or later origin should escape the 
death-dealing testimony of *'the witnesses from the 
dust" is perhaps less credible than the narrative of the 
escape from ^'the den of lions." 

NOTE ON Daniel's use of Persian words. 

The words in the book of Daniel which are claimed 
to be Persian, or of Persian origin, are translated in 
Driver's Daniel as follows : 

"Choice food, delicacies ; law ; secret ; satraps ; coun- 
sel-giver; law-bearer; justice; kind; message, order, 
decree; minister; President; receptacle, sheath; pal- 
ace ; throne-room ; present ; mantle ; necklace." 

To the report that these are all Persian words, and 
to the translation of some of them objection might 
perhaps be substantiated. As to some of them an argu- 
ment against the condemnation of the book because of 



136 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

their presence in it might be made from the connection 
in which they are found, and the new use of that which 
is named. But arguments such as this may for the 
present safely be waived. 

It is not our purpose to dispute the ethnic origin of 
these words, nor the rendering recited ; nor is it at all 
necessary for us so to do, but rather otherwise, as may, 
perhaps, be hereafter apparent. For at a glance it is 
evident that all these words, except, perhaps, ''satraps," 
^'President," indicate what are matters of every-day life, 
or are common to all peoples and nations. Further- 
more, it is not made an objection to DanieFs use, '^that 
these words are in books written after the Persian 
empire was organized,'' and ''when Persian influence 
prevailed,'' or because "many were permanently nat- 
uralized in Aramaic (both Syriac and the Aramaic of 
the Targums)." These are facts admitted, and incon- 
testable proofs that such words were in early use in 
that country. But the mystery is, and there the objec- 
tion to the date claimed for the book lies, that these 
words "should be used as a matter of course by Daniel 
under the Babylonian supremacy, or in the description 
of Babylonian supremacy, or in the description of Bab- 
ylonian institutions before the conquest of Cyrus," and 
this is pronounced, ^'ex cathedra/' "to be in the last 
degree improbable." At the same time and with the 
same authoritative dictum "this argument" (?) is said 
to be "confirmed by the testimony of the inscriptions." 
To this it might be answered that there is good reason 
to believe that there is no impossibility of the truth of 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 137 

the assertion that the words were in use in Babylon 
''before the conquest by Cyrus/' and that the prima 
facie evidence from the book itself is that Daniel did 
not write nor publish his account "under [during] the 
Babylonian supremacy," but after that had passed away 
and the Persian influence was absolute and everywhere 
felt in their widely extended empire. The absence of 
Persian words in contract tablets during ''Chaldean 
supremacy" is what might be expected, and a negation 
or omission is not necessarily a positive argument or 
proof of certainty as to the opposite, nor can have any 
bearing upon it, unless they treat of subjects the same, 
or in which such words or their equivalents must be 
used, and of this, evidence has not, I think, been ad- 
duced. (See Driver's Daniel, p. Ivii.) 

As before stated, the things or matters indicated by 
these Persian words are clearly not merely peculiar 
to Persia, nor indeed limited to any one nation or peo- 
ple. "Food" is everywhere necessary for existence, 
and is often indicated even among the same people by 
different or several words or forms of expression, both 
native and foreign. But, for the sake of argument, 
suppose it be admitted — it might possibly even strength- 
en our position to contend — that these words were not 
in actual use in Babylonia prior to the conquest by 
Cyrus, or at the time when the events occurred of 
which Daniel writes an account, the effect of such an 
admission or contention upon the question as to the 
date when the book containing such words was written 
is not thereby absolutely settled. For a settlement in 



138 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

that way it would seem necessary to assume that a 
man who lived during the period which was included 
in the claimed lifetime, circumstances, and in the midst 
of the associations and influences with which the book 
or story surrounds him could neither know nor use 
these Persian words or names for things common to 
all. Yet it seems certain that all these names were in 
use among the Persians ; and no valid or absolutely in- 
defeasible reason can be given, or a greater probability 
established, that for ten, twenty, or possibly thirty 
years these common Persian words, in a region where 
Persian influence was supreme, neither superseded, nor 
mingled with, nor shared in common with the native 
or Aramaic words of the same class or kind. 

What now are the facts as set forth or implied in the 
statements of the book of Daniel as to his environ- 
ments? From the taking of Babylon (B. C. 538) and 
the extinction of the Babylono-Chaldean empire, Dan- 
iel was absolutely in the power of the Medes and Per- 
sians, people of one and the same language ; was in their 
employment in matters of state, and therefore must 
have acquired a greater or less familiarity especially 
with the common words of their language, and in his 
later years to him, as himself a foreigner, and indebted 
for favor to both himself and his nation, such words 
would most readily come, and to their use he would 
be most naturally drawn, as aiding and abetting the 
purpose of the dominant authority to Persianize all 
things in the empire. 

In the argument of Professor Driver it seems to be 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 139 

assumed that the book itself claims or gives indications 
that it was written during the supremacy of the Bab- 
ylonian empire. But, if the book is to be taken as ev- 
idence, it is absolutely settled thereby that a large part 
of it could not have been written until after the 
conquest. Thus, at the close of the first chapter it is 
stated that *'Daniel continued even to the first year 
of Cyrus," which, of course, was after the conquest. 
Neither could the fifth, nor sixth, nor ninth, nor 
tenth, nor eleventh, nor twelfth chapters have been 
written until after the conquest, if the book itself 
is to be taken in evidence. The prima facie evidence 
from the book itself is that it was written late in Dan- 
iel's lifetime, as late as near, if not after, the close of 
the reign of Cyrus, perhaps after he had retired outside 
of Babylon, to some residence or retreat near the great 
river Hiddekel (Tigris). 

It need not be a matter of surprise that during this 
period of possible subserviency to Persian domination 
a few Persian names of common things, and two names 
of matters peculiar to the Medes and Persians, should 
even in Babylon have taken place among, or even 
superseded in common use, the vernacular Semite ex- 
pressions. It would indeed be more surprising if such 
substitutions had not occurred, especially in view of the 
evident purpose of the Persians as quickly as possible 
to absolutely Persianize their vast empire. 

It seems, also, to have been overlooked in the argu- 
ment combated that Parsuans, or Persians, and their 
language could not be wholly unknown to the Baby- 



140 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

lonians long before the conquest by Cyrus and the life- 
time of Daniel. Early as the reign of Tiglath-pileser 
III (B. C 731) the name Poros, found in the king list 
of Ptolemy, is claimed by critics to be a Persian form 
of the name Pul, who is by them identified as Tiglath- 
pileser the Assyrian, who about that time is said to have 
taken the hands of Bel, and thereby to have been in- 
augurated as king of Babylon. Some thirty or more 
years later the Parsuans, or Persians, were among the 
allies of the king of Elam, who fought against Sennach- 
erib for the mastery of Babylonia, and to them the 
sympathy of the Babylonians tended. During the reign 
of Nabopolassar both before and after the fall of Nin- 
eveh, and probably of Nebuchadnezzar, who had mar- 
ried the daughter of Cyaxares the Median king, the 
Babylonians and the Medes — the language of the latter 
being identical with that of the Persians — were thus 
in intimate relation with each other (607-563). It 
could not, therefore, be at all marvelous if a few such 
common words as these should be known among the 
people who did not write history or commercial tablets, 
and for state or through race antagonism be ignored by 
those who did write. As above intimated, it was dif- 
ferent with Daniel the Jew, writing his book after the 
Persian supremacy, having no race prejudice, certainly 
not against Persians, who had greatly favored both 
himself and his people, and had every reason to coop- 
erate with them in the Persianizing both language and 
customs in the empire. In his close contact with the 
Medes and Persians he would be more familiar with 



Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 141 

the words day by day uttered in his presence by both 
superiors and inferiors, and would use them perhaps 
preferably to the Aramaic. It is fair to say that it 
is more to be wondered at that so few Persian words 
occur than that these few should be found in his writ- 
ing, just as we may say that it would be strange that 
a writer in the Maccabean age with Greek supremacy, 
Greek language, Greek everywhere about him, whether 
in Judea or Babylonia, and in the decadence or col- 
lapse of Persian, should use any Persian words, or fail 
to use Grecian words and give to his story the Grecian 
coloring. In both cases the conclusion seems just that 
the tendency of the argument is to authenticate the 
early date for the writing of the book of Daniel. With 
a Median princess as queen in the palace of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, her vernacular, Persian, and Daniel's close as- 
sociation therewith, and with the government, during 
some fourscore years, covering the entire existence of 
the Babylono-Chaldean kingdom, and some part, if 
not the whole, of the reign of Cyrus ; with the Greeks 
of Cyprus conquered by Sargon, and the order of 
Nebuchadnezzar that the governors of the provinces as- 
semble on the plain of Dura, among whom was doubt- 
less the governor of Cyprus with his civil and military 
retinues, among whom it is not unreasonable to assume 
that he would mingle Greeks in his musical band, nor 
is it unreasonable to assume that out of courtesy or 
curiosity, and for the necessity of their distinctly know- 
ing that the Greek instruments were to share in the 
honor of signaling the time of worship ; what could be 



142 Daniel, Darius the Median, and Cyrus 

more natural than that Nebuchadnezzar should spe- 
cifically name the instrument — theirs, perhaps, both 
by name and invention? Any objection, therefore, 
urged against the early date of this book based upon 
the occurrence of either Persian or Greek words therein, 
'Hs to the last degree improbable,'' if not absolutely 
absurd. 





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